


Coffee as a Metaphor for Other Things

by lastSaskatchewanPirate



Series: Metaphorical Coffee [1]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Profanity, RST, UST, eventual Megatron/Rodimus, gross pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2018-11-18 16:32:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 27,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11294469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastSaskatchewanPirate/pseuds/lastSaskatchewanPirate
Summary: There's some crabby old dude sitting in Rodimus's seat, and he won't give it back.  The nerve.





	1. The Saga Begins

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written fic in a decade and a half. Then I fell into the Transformers fandom. Then I fell over @mrdraws's gorgeous art, and then their humanFormers project. Then my brain caught on fire and I started writing again, god help us all. You've been warned.
> 
> I'm old enough to preface all fic with a host of standard disclaimers disavowing any and all ownership, profit, etc.; this is a work of transformative fiction; please do not sue me.

He was there again.

For the third day in a row, this scruffy old dude was sitting in Rodimus’s seat, reading a book and stolidly ignoring every living thing on that bus, including Rodimus’s paint-stripping glare. Just sitting there, shoulders slightly hunched as though trying to avoid the barest possibility of contact with anyone around him. Just sitting there, reading that damn book with laser-focused intensity that practically screamed, “DO NOT APPROACH.”

Just sitting there, in Rodimus’s seat.

Again.

Rodimus shifted his weight pointedly and huffed under his breath. The bus was crowded at this hour, people flooding into the city center for their daily grind, and Rodimus was packed in like a sardine between three college students with overstuffed backpacks, a bored-looking guy in a cheap suit, and a tiny grandma with the pointiest elbows he’d ever encountered. Rodimus was also positioned directly in front of the scruffy old guy monopolizing his seat, and it was a damn good thing the old guy wasn’t man-spreading or Rod would have been straddling his leg.

The bus took a corner at higher-than-advisable speed and the sardine pack lurched as a single unit. Much to their mutual displeasure, this resulted in Rodimus banging into Crabby Old Seat-Thief, and only a white-knuckled grip on the overhead bar prevented Rodimus from face-planting into the guy’s lap.

Crabby Old Seat-Thief glared at him severely from between a spectacularly boring pair of wire-rims and a spectacularly intimidating pair of eyebrows. Rodimus refused to be quailed by some octogenarian seat-stealing bookworm, and glared back defiantly. Crabby Old Seat-Thief rolled his eyes and returned to his ferociously intent reading.

Rodimus sighed. It was going to be a long day.

*

It was a long day. Roddy managed to pull some overtime, which was great for his wallet but meant he was totally wiped out by the time he dragged his weary ass to the bus stop. He briefly debated grabbing a couple slices at the pizza joint down the block, but decided that even the meat-lover’s supreme wasn’t enough inducement to outweigh the effort of walking over there.

On the other hand, missing rush hour meant that the bus was significantly less crowded, and Rodimus was relieved to see that there were plenty of seats available as he climbed aboard.

Plenty of seats … but not HIS seat.

Crabby Old Seat-Thief was back.

The fuck. Seriously?

Rodimus flung himself into the seat opposite and glared with as much ferocity as he could muster at the crusty old book-reading geezer who was once again comfortably ensconced in HIS SEAT.

Crabby Old Seat-Thief looked up, returned the glare with interest, and went back to his book.

Rodimus slunk lower in his current – markedly inferior – seat and tried not to pout.

*

“Dude, it’s just a seat on the bus.”

Rodimus dropped his head back against the gunwale and groaned with all the soul-deep pain of the Chronically Misunderstood. “Dude. No. It’s not just a seat on the bus; it’s MY seat. I’ve been sitting in that seat since I started riding that damn bus! It’s the principle of the thing, y’know?”

Drift hid his smirk behind the neck of the beer bottle in his hand and nudged the tiller bar into a more comfortable position under his elbow. The sun was dropping low over the bay, and the Lost Light’s sails flapped idly as they were strummed by a light, rising breeze. Ostensibly, Drift had taken Rodimus out for a sail and some fishing, but their rigs trailed largely unattended in the water and they hadn’t actually made it terribly far from shore before the need to crack open a couple of beers and bitch about their respective miseries had overcome them.

Well. Mostly Rodimus was overcome. Mostly Drift listened, and smiled, and interjected occasionally; but Drift was also older than Rodimus – though nowhere near as decrepit as the doddering bibliophile seat-usurper – and whatever rough edges had been left by a stint in the Special Forces had been polished smooth by an extended tour of Southeast Asia and a thorough introduction to Buddhism, meditation, and a rather esoteric form of Kung Fu. Drift, as Rodimus had had ample occasion to observe, was the world’s most dangerous hippie. A little thing like bus-seat claim jumping was not going to perturb his chill.

“Well, then, why don’t you just say something?”

Rodimus peered at Drift suspiciously. Drift gazed serenely back like an obnoxiously laid-back saint, sun-bleached hair backlit into a platinum halo to complete the effect.

“Say something? Like what, exactly?”

“Like, ‘please, sir,’” Drift piously clutched his beer in both hands and turned his eyes beseechingly skyward, “’I’m so weakened by my obsessive fixation with this particular seat that I need you to get up so I can plant my bony ass in it …’”

Rodimus nearly aspirated his beer and kicked ineffectually at Drift with a bare, bony foot. “Dude! I am not …!”

Drift didn’t bother dodging; shrugged; drank. “Seriously, man, if it’s causing you this much angst, then do something about it. Say something. Or get over it, ‘cause – seriously – you cannot keep obsessing over this. It ain’t healthy.”

Rodimus let his head thunk back against the gunwale, and sighed. “Yeah. Maybe. Okay.”

* 

Monday morning rush hour. Once again, the bus was packed, and Rodimus was squeezed between Pointy Elbowed Grandma and a guy who smelled like salami. Once again, Crabby Old Seat-Thief was ensconced in Rodimus’s seat, reading his book as though sheer determination could keep the rest of the world from inflicting itself upon him. Once again, Rodimus found himself seething about the injustice of geriatric pedants who seemingly had nothing better to do than loiter maliciously in his spot.

He was working himself into a decent lather, actually, before Drift’s advice managed to filter through the haze of frustration. Rodimus took a deep breath, shook himself a little, and cleared his throat.

Crabby Old Seat-Thief ignored him pointedly.

Rodimus cleared his throat with a little more authority.

The ignoring became, if anything, more pointed.

“’Scuse me,” Rodimus gritted out.

The inter-specs-and-brows glare was deployed. Rodimus cringed a little, but steeled himself and continued.

“’Scuse me, but, uh … that’s my seat.”

The eyebrows went up instead of further down, and the glare became openly sardonic.

“I mean …” Rodimus floundered but rallied defiantly, “obviously it’s not MINE, this is public transportation and all, freedom of sitting or whatever, but … uh, I like that seat, and you’ve been taking it lately, and it’s been really bugging me, so …” Rodimus shrugged a little helplessly, winding down under the sheer weight of that sardonic stare, but unwilling to completely back down. “Uh. So, y’know, could I …? Um. Could I have my seat?”

Crabby Old Seat-Thief stared at him for a moment longer before returning to the apparently fascinating contents of his book.

“No.”

Rodimus slumped.


	2. Challenge Issued

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's some red-haired kid glaring at him. Whatever.

He was staring again.

Well. Glaring was probably a more accurate description, though – to be fair – it wasn’t much of a glare to someone who had just spent the last two-and-a-half decades in prison. Compared to the facial expressions on display every morning in the mess hall, Coppertop’s grumpy pout was about as menacing as a gerbil with a headache.

Megatron resisted the urge to shift in his seat with all the long practice of a man who had learned under the harshest of circumstances never to show weakness to an opponent … even if said opponent was a lanky redhead with an undefined grudge.

Pfft. Whatever. Let the kid glare. 

Megatron settled himself firmly into the (frankly uncomfortable) bus seat and returned to his book.

* 

“So! Good book, huh?”

It actually took a moment for Megatron to realize that the question was directed at him, and sheer astonishment at the kid’s audacity rendered him effectively mute for a moment after that. He leveled a glare at Obnoxious Coppertop that should have made the kid flinch back like he’d stepped in cold cat barf in the middle of the night; but instead the kid just grinned brightly down at him from his position at the overhead bar.

Megatron elected not to dignify the inane question with a response, and returned to his book.

* 

“Hey, buddy! How’s that seat? Your butt fused to it yet?”

Megatron did not allow any response to show on his face or in his posture, but inside he was rolling his eyes so hard they would have been in danger of popping out of his skull.

Obnoxious Coppertop swayed lightly with the motion of the bus as the driver took a corner with more enthusiasm than skill, and beamed at Megatron.

Megatron resisted the urge to throw the kid out the window, and returned to his book.

*

“Yo, it’s Seniors Bingo Day at the county library!” Obnoxious Coppertop shot him a devastating one-two combo of cheesy wink and double finger-guns. “Gonna go score some geriatric nooky?”

This time, the flat glare Megatron leveled at him actually made the kid shrink back, hands raised defensively.

Megatron grumbled profanely under his breath, and returned to his book.

* 

“How’s the weather down there?”

Megatron steeled himself not to respond. Don’t react, don’t react, don’t …

“Must be cold, ‘cause it sure ain’t hot from what I can see.”

What? That just wasn’t even worth an eye roll.

*

“Beautiful day today!” Obnoxious Coppertop warbled happily, dancing in place as he clung to the overhead bar, and returning the virulent stink-eye from some cheaply-suited corporate drone with a brilliant smile. “Day like this makes me want to try something new, y’know? Like, I dunno …” That brilliant, high-wattage grin was suddenly turned full-force on Megatron, who found himself briefly paralyzed with sheer incomprehension in the face of such glee being directed anywhere near him. “Hey, let’s try something new together, yeah? Let’s trade places! That’ll be fun!” The grin was topped off with a gormlessly innocent stare from blue – god, impossibly blue – eyes …

… No. Not going there.

Megatron retreated back into his book with a scowl, and tried to convince himself he hadn’t noticed how the red-haired kid’s shoulders had slumped just a little at his rejection.

*

“So … um, in all seriousness. What are you reading?”

Megatron side-eyed the kid, who had taken advantage of an unexpected lull in passenger density to slide into the seat next to him, and was now looking at him with a combination of sheepish self-deprecation and something that Megatron would have labeled as “hope” had the possibility of such an emotion surviving in his vicinity not been vanishingly small.

For a long moment, neither of them moved. Then, as the kid began to wilt slightly in retreat, Megatron tipped the spine of the book toward him.

Obnoxious Coppertop’s eyes – startlingly blue, blue eyes (no, don’t) – widened in surprise at the motion before dropping to the proffered title.

“The Collected Works of Robert Frost.”

Megatron raised a warning eyebrow at the slightly skeptical tone in Obnoxious Coppertop’s voice. Obnoxious Coppertop visibly backpedaled.

“No, hey, that sounds cool. I just never … y’know, thought about reading that stuff for, like, fun.” He shrugged tightly. “Um. Just. Had to read it in school, you know?”

Megatron grunted acknowledgement and moved to return to his reading. The kid’s voice, softer than usual, stopped him.

“I, uh. Really liked the one about a star. You know that one?”

Taken aback, Megatron could only blink in astonishment. The kid rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

“Or … uh, maybe not. Maybe you hate that one …”

“No.”

After such protracted disuse, Megatron’s voice was a deep rasp that made the kid jump. He cleared his throat and tried again.

“No, I … I like that one, too.”

The slow, shy smile blooming across the kid’s face was like sunrise breaking through an open prison gate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem referenced is Robert Frost's "Something Like a Star."


	3. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rodimus learns something unexpected, and handles it with his usual grace ... which is to say, next to none.

He was daydreaming again.

Drift took advantage of the opportunity provided by Rodimus’s distraction to smile indulgently at his friend without getting straw wrappers thrown at him. He had also been taking advantage of Rodimus’s distraction to make serious inroads on Rodimus’s fries while Rodimus stared out the diner window, a French fry forgotten halfway to his mouth and about to drop its load of ketchup on the table.

“Hey. Earth to Roddy,” said Drift, and then snerked as Rodimus startled, twitched, and flung ketchup across the table.

“… Gah! Shit, what?!”

Drift decided that a ketchup stain on his shirt was worth it for Rodimus’s reaction. “You look like you got some heavy-duty contemplation goin’ on, there.” He snuck a glance at Rodimus while wiping up the ketchup splatter – yep, gobsmacked and embarrassed. This should be good. “What’s got you so wound up?”

“Nothing!” Rodimus snapped defensively, making it patently obvious to everyone in the vicinity that there was indeed something, and it was definitely embarrassing. “I’m not wound up! Jesus, can’t a guy, y’know, think about things without something being up?”

“No.”

Rodimus stared. “What?”

Drift grinned. “Maybe ‘a guy’ can, but you sure as hell can’t. What is it?” The grin turned sly. “Is it that guy on the bus you’ve been bitching about?”

Rodimus stuffed a handful of fries in his mouth in lieu of answering, and slouched further into the vinyl backrest.

Well. That would be a resounding “yes.”

*

It was all Crabby Old Seat-Thief’s fault. That and the weather, which had finally decided to grudgingly wrap up its tepid and soggy attempts at winter and try warming up for a change of pace.

Rodimus had been standing there in his new usual spot on the bus – i.e. directly in front of what used to be his seat before Crabby Old Seat-Thief came along and usurped it – and staring idly out the window when a motion caught his attention and dragged it squarely back to Crabby Old Seat-Thief.

It appeared that Crabby Old Seat-Thief had finally succumbed to the sweltering conditions on the un-air conditioned bus, and had actually PUT DOWN HIS BOOK to lean forward and shrug off the ratty grey canvas coat he always wore. He was wearing an equally boring black t-shirt underneath, but that wasn’t what caught Rodimus’s attention; that wasn’t why Rodimus’s brain stalled out and he forgot how to blink for a minute or so.

Crabby Old Seat-Thief was ripped.

Like, seriously. When Crabby Old Seat-Thief wasn’t hunched in on himself to avoid all possible human contact, his shoulders were broad and heavily muscled, and his forearms were cabled with muscle under a surprising network of old scars, and his biceps made Rodimus want to curl up on the floor and weep, and …

And Crabby Old Seat-Thief was fucking HOT.

And not actually that old, now that Rodimus was really looking at him. His hair was thickly shot with grey and his face lined, but it seemed like that was more a product of hard use and some serious city miles as opposed to actual age. There were more fine scars on his face and neck, Rodimus realized, and on his hands.

His big hands.

Big, broad hands, with long elegant fingers, the palms striped with calluses from hard manual labor, old white scars webbed over his knuckles that were clearly from fighting, clear signs of old breaks and damage and heavy use; and for all that, his touch on the books he so obviously loved was always so delicate, and Rodimus found himself wondering rather breathlessly whether those huge warm hands would be just as delicate on other things, in other circumstances …

Rodimus braked hard on that train of thought before it could leave the station, forced his eyes back up and out the window behind Crabby Not-So-Old Seat-Thief’s head as the other man settled back into his seat, coat neatly folded on his lap, and resumed his book; forced himself to breathe steadily and act as though everything was fine, was normal, that the foundations of his world were un-rocked.

He could do nothing about the furious blush painting his cheeks. Rodimus bit the inside of his lip and prayed that anyone watching would think it was from the heat.


	4. Mug Shots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes being a surly, jaded loner is harder than it seems.

He was doing it again.

Megatron scrubbed his dishes and wished that he could scrub the inside of his head with the same efficiency.

One fork. One knife. One spoon. One plate, one bowl, one coffee mug, neatly washed and set in the drying rack beside the sink; they would be put away in the single cabinet once the rest of his evening routine – calisthenics, reading, mandated phone check-in with parole officer – was completed. One of each; all that was needed and nothing more.

One plate, one bowl, one coffee mug. Megatron washed them and rinsed them and placed them in the drying rack. Then, carefully not thinking beyond each step of the process, he peeled the price tag off a brand-new coffee mug. Then he washed it, and rinsed it, and put it in the drying rack next to the other mug.

Two coffee mugs.

Megatron stared at the contents of the drying rack for a moment before abruptly turning away, turning off the single fluorescent light over the sink and plunging the tiny apartment into darkness.

Two coffee mugs, and a pair of bright blue eyes and terrible jokes and a bizarre attachment to one particular seat on the bus. Two coffee mugs, and the fragile hope of human interaction that number implied.

He was doing it again – he was letting himself hope for something beyond the grey, empty box to which he had sentenced himself by a lifetime of bad decisions. He was letting himself start to feel again, to seek out something other than the endless monotony of life on parole. He was letting himself want … and that was something he could not do, because wanting lead to … well. Nothing Megatron had ever wanted seemed to end well.

… but GOD it was hard sometimes. It was so hard not to want, to see something bold and bright and beautiful and strong and to be unmoved by it. It was so hard to hold himself apart and alone, even though he knew – bone-deep and unshakable – that he needed to be apart and alone, that he deserved it, that he carried destruction and misery wherever he went, regardless of whether he meant to or not.

It was so hard not to want something that someone else wanted him to have.

Blue, blue eyes – god, so blue – and a shy smile hiding behind brash words and bold deeds, and a good heart beneath it all; and an offer of … something. Contact? Friendship? More? Impossible to say; Christ, he didn’t even know the kid’s name.

A shy smile, and a tentative voice, and a careful overture: “I liked the one about the star.”

A hope for connection.

It was right there in front of him, genuinely and freely offered; all he had to do was reach out for it. All that light and life and warmth and hope – god, so much hope in one person, how did he do it? – and it could be his if he just let himself take it.

… Take it, and destroy it, as he destroyed everything he touched. Take it, and see that light flicker and fade, that life and warmth and hope snuffed out and turned to ash by the choking corrosion of his touch, by the weight of all that he carried with him.

He couldn’t do that.

The emptiness between his arms, inside his ribs, around his heart – the emptiness ached. Like the simple primal beast it was, the emptiness whined its hurt and ached its desperation and could not understand why it could not be filled … why he could never let it be filled.

Alone in a dark room, Megatron let his head fall forward into his hands. There was no one to see. No one to judge. No one to hear the tiny, involuntary sound of pain that wrenched itself loose. There was no one; and that was what he deserved.


	5. A Date by Any Other Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's just coffee. Not a date. Definitely not a date. Who said anything about a date?

He was dithering again.

Rodimus scrubbed fiercely at the back of his head with one hand and huffed irritation with himself. It’s not like this was brain surgery, for god’s sake; or rocket science, or pharmacology, or interstellar navigation. It was just a damn cup of coffee.

… a damn cup of coffee with someone Rodimus was actually coming to like, someone he wanted to know better, someone he’d like to see for more than twenty minutes of being squashed into excruciatingly tight quarters with a far larger cross-section of humanity than was strictly necessary – to say nothing of desirable – for a date.

No. Not a date. Definitely not a date.

Just coffee.

Rod scrubbed his hand fiercely against the leg of his jeans this time, huffed again, and tried to compose himself.

“What is it.”

Rodimus jumped. Crabby Old Seat-Thief hadn’t actually bothered looking up from his book, but his eyebrows fairly radiated impatience. After a moment without a response, Crabby Old Seat-Thief finally deigned to glance up from his reading and scowled ferociously at Rodimus, who twitched.

“Something is clearly on your mind, kid. Out with it.”

That was undoubtedly the longest sentence Rodimus had ever heard that deep, harsh voice grit out in his presence, but he took a firm grip on any potential further dithering, girded his loins, and gasped out, “Coffee.”

The ferocious scowl did not abate. Clearly some sort of explanation was in order.

“Um,” said Rod, eloquently. “Coffee. Yeah. Would you, uh … like to get some? Maybe?”

A layer of suspicion was added to the ferocious scowl. “Why.”

Rodimus blinked – apparently question marks were for other people, and Crabby Old Seat-Thief spoke entirely in flat statements. “Uh. Because I like coffee? And … well, I assume you like coffee, I don’t know, maybe you like tea or, like, kombucha or some weird-ass shit like that, but … Uh. It might be. Nice?”

“Nice” appeared to be a four-letter word in Crabby Old Seat-Thief’s lexicon. Entirely new dimensions were added to that scowl which Rodimus found himself unable to parse, and he found himself taking refuge in offensive sarcasm.  
“Or, you know, whatever, if you want to be a crusty old seat-stealing pedant and die of dehydration on a city bus, it’s not my problem. Thought we could interact like adult humans or something, my bad, forgot that you’re literally joined at the hip to that seat now like some transport-based conjoined twin and god help you if you stand up in my presence, I might try to get between you and your one true love the bus seat, I …”

Over the course of Rodimus’s impassioned ranting, the ferocious and multi-layered scowl had begun to smooth out into something different, something that Rod was almost tempted to label “amusement” save that applying said label to anything related to Crabby Old Seat-Thief was wrong on a deeply fundamental level; but the scowl was definitely lighter, and the crows-feet edging Crabby Old Seat-Thief’s eyes had deepened in a way that usually translated to a show of humor in most people.

“Really bothers you that much, does it?”

Rodimus stopped mid-rant, cut off by that landslide-in-a-gravel-pit voice and his own reaction to it, and gaped stupidly for a moment. “What?”

“My sitting in this particular seat. You still have a bug in your ear over that?”

Yeah, okay, there was definitely amusement there, in the voice if not on the face, and Rodimus suspected that Crabby Old Seat-Thief was now holding back a smirk simply through long practice in being a stone-faced bastard.

Rodimus straightened himself with dignity. “As a matter of fact, I do.” He stared defiance back at Crabby Old Seat-Thief, who seemed almost delighted at being defied at.

A chime and a jolt signaled the bus pulling to a stop, and to Rodimus’s astonishment, Crabby Old Seat-Thief closed his book and stood up.

And up. And up. Jesus Christ, the guy must be six six if he was an inch.

“Well then,” said Crabby Old Seat-Thief, with something that might have been a smile on a face less severe, “shall we?”

“Uh?” said Rodimus.

“Coffee,” said Crabby Old Seat-Thief helpfully. “Or tea, or kombucha if you prefer. I like coffee, myself.”

“Uh,” said Rodimus again, and then seized control of his motor functions sufficiently to follow Crabby Old Seat-Thief off the bus. “Yeah. I like coffee, too.”


	6. Common Grounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which names are finally exchanged, and coffee is drunk.

He was in so much trouble.

What was he thinking? This was the worst idea he’d had since the whole surfing-with-flares thing, and he was still buffing the scorch marks out of his board from that one.

In a haze of bemusement and dissociation, Rodimus found himself following Crabby Old Seat-Thief off the bus and onto the sidewalk in front of Common Grounds, one of the better local coffee joints.

The two men stood there for a moment, mired in a silence so awkward that pedestrians actually started crossing the street to avoid passing through the Zone of Shame.

Naturally, Rodimus was the one to break it. “So, uh.” He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and grinned sheepishly, mentally kicking himself even as he said it, “Come here often?”

Crabby Old Seat-Thief visibly cringed before forcing his shoulders to relax down from around his ears, straightening his posture like a man about to face a firing squad. “Yes,” he snapped, and strode through the shop door to meet his fate like a boss.

“Sweet!” Rodimus chirped and scrambled after him, the door swinging shut nearly on his heels. “So I guess you have a usual? Are you a regular? Do you have, like, your own seat? ‘Cause that totally seems to be a thing with you, I can definitely see you laying permanent claim to anything you might have sat in … Hey, do they yell your name when you walk in, like that guy on ‘Cheers’?” Rodimus stopped short. “Holy crap, I don’t … what is your name? I mean, we’re having coffee together, I can’t exactly keep calling you ‘crabby old dude who stole my seat on the bus.’”

An almost infinitesimal spasm crossed Crabby Old Seat-Thief’s face. On someone less utterly committed to stony stoicism, it might have been a suppressed smile; on Crabby Old Seat-Thief, it could have been anything from apocalyptic rage to a minor bowel issue. “Yes, well,” he finally gritted out, “that does seem unnecessarily awkward.”

Crabby Old Seat-Thief visibly composed himself; turned to Rodimus, and extended his hand. “Megatron.”

A grin of inexpressible, uncontrollable, utter delight burst across Roddy’s face like a sunrise, and in the middle of a nondescript local coffee shop, he took Crabby Old – took Megatron’s hand in his own much smaller one. “Rodimus.”

*

He was in so much trouble.

What was he thinking? This was the worst idea he’d had since that thing with the base-jumping and the crystal meth. This was worse than teaming up with that smart-ass backstabbing pilot. This was worse than anything Impactor had ever talked him into while drunk, which was saying a hell of a lot.

Megatron stood there with Obnoxious Coppertop’s – Rodimus’s – hand engulfed in his own, and tried to remember how to breathe under the suffocating weight of that improbably delighted smile being directed at him of all people. It occurred to him belatedly that he might be holding onto that slim, warm hand a little too long, and dropped it hastily while trying not to seem like he was dropping it hastily.

God dammit. One touch and one smile, and the kid had Megatron fumbling like the adolescent dimwit he hadn’t been in fucking decades. This couldn’t happen; he couldn’t let this happen, he couldn’t care or … or want.

The incredibly awkward silence tried to clamp down around them again, and Megatron almost would have welcomed it as a familiar presence … but somehow Rodimus and his raw charisma seemed to burn it off like fog in sunshine. He was quiet for the moment – astonishing in its own right – but was reading the menu board with bright, curious eyes; dancing unconsciously to whatever was playing on the sound system – something by the White Stripes, by the sound of it – sneakers squeaking softly against the tile floor; smiling at the barista who was outright staring at the unthinkable sight of someone willingly standing in proximity to Megatron … Roddy was an improbable mix of oblivious and intense and brash, and obviously overcompensating for a nigh-crippling lack of self-esteem, and somehow it all went right on through obnoxious and out the other side to charming.

Coffee in hand – and yes, Megatron did have a usual; and yes, the staff did know him by name, both of which facts delighted Rodimus to no end – they found a table; and if Megatron carefully did not sit in his usual spot, well, that was no one’s business but his own, and sitting in the comfortable leather club chairs by the window was just too intimate for something that wasn’t even a date – not remotely in the same vicinity as a date; who said anything about a date, anyway?

“Dude, I was right,” Rodimus caroled happily, dropping into his seat and stretching out his long legs under the table. “You do have a usual! And they know your name!”

“You’ll note that they didn’t shout it,” Megatron muttered dryly. Small mercies, he added to himself.

“Somehow I’ll recover from the crushing disappointment,” said Rodimus, equally dryly, and Megatron managed to avoid choking on his single-source only by sheer luck. Who would have guessed that Obnoxious Coppertop had a vocabulary and a sense of humor to go with it?

Oh god. He was so fucked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone is wondering, surfing with flares attached to your board is a real thing, and I am convinced Roddy would do it.
> 
> http://www.boredpanda.com/flare-surfing-bruce-irons/


	7. Paladins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rodimus sticks his foot in it. Just another Saturday night, really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuity edits have been made. Hopefully things hang together a little better now.

He was in trouble again.

Big surprise, there; Rodimus had a positive genius for getting himself into situations that could only be described as “trouble” by someone with limited imagination and vocabulary. “Stupidly dangerous,” “apocalyptically catastrophic,” or even the pithy “completely fucked” tended to be more appropriate, and this was shaping up to be no exception.

C’mon. Like he’s gonna stand there and do nothing while a bunch of drunk yahoos throw beer bottles at a homeless guy? Like he’s not gonna call them on their crap?

… like he’s not gonna get his ass handed to him – again – in about twelve seconds?

Rodimus clenched his jaw, clenched his fists, and steadied himself. Behind him, the homeless guy huddled against the wall, too shell-shocked to do otherwise. In front of him, four beefy dudes reeking of cheap alcohol and white male privilege smirked menacingly.

Big Mac Triple was apparently their leader, based on his trucker hat of dubious provenance and a truly appalling example of stick-and-poke prison tattoo work on his left forearm. He grinned unpleasantly at Rodimus. “You had your chance to leave, freak, but now me ‘n the boys are gonna pound your skinny ass.”

Big Mac Triple’s lieutenant, Junior Bacon Cheeseburger, had been fidgeting with an empty beer bottle for the duration of the stand-off. As if to punctuate Big Mac Triple’s threat, he whipped the bottle at Rodimus’s head. Rodimus ducked – the greasy little bastard had telegraphed the throw like Western Union – and the bottle smashed on the wall behind him, showering Rodimus and the homeless guy with broken glass.

The homeless guy yelped in pain, and Rodimus let out a howl of wordless rage and charged.

Big Mac Triple met his charge with a punch that snapped Rodimus’s head back and followed it up with a vicious hook to the ribs as Rodimus sagged. Junior Bacon Cheeseburger and the rest of the Merry Murder Meatheads surged forward to finish the job, and Rodimus struggled to remain on his feet – once he was down, it was over, they would stomp him into pulp and then go for the homeless guy – but Big Mac Triple was a big dude and damn he hit hard and …

And then there was a crunch and a howl from behind Big Mac Triple, and Junior Bacon Cheeseburger went flying into a trashcan with a tremendous crash and didn’t get back up.

Big Mac Triple turned around just in time to receive a punch that thundered in like a runaway freight train. He squawked and staggered back, clutching his face, and mushed out something that might have been “What the fuck?” had his facial bones not just been rearranged.

What the fuck, indeed. It was Megatron, and he looked even more pissed than that day on the bus when a drunk frat guy dropped pizza on his book.

Big Mac Triple growled through a mask of blood and lunged for Megatron, who deflected the blow with insultingly casual ease, grabbed Big Mac Triple by the front of his shirt, and yanked him into a headbutt that finished the job started by his fist of smearing Big Mac Triple’s nose across his face.

The other two meatheads looked at Megatron, looked at Big Mac Triple and Junior Bacon Cheeseburger, and decided that a hasty retreat was in order.

Rodimus looked at Megatron, too. The guy was splattered with blood – none of it his – and didn’t appear to have broken a sweat despite having just flattened two huge bruisers.

It probably said a host of messed-up things about him that Rodimus was finding that uncomfortably hot.

Megatron wiped his hands dismissively on the legs of his jeans and stepped closer to Rodimus. The homeless guy still cringing against the wall decided that this was one huge bruiser too many and beat his own hasty retreat in the opposite direction taken by the meathead contingent. Rodimus, meanwhile, forced himself to relax and lower his hands. “Hey, uh … thanks? Um. What, uh, what are you doing here, anyway?”

“I was taking a walk.” Megatron scowled at him. “Are you all right?”

“What, this?” Rodimus grinned brightly, despite the ache and burn setting in from Big Mac Triple’s bludgeoning. “This is nothing, I’m fine. Totally good.”

Megatron's skeptical eyebrow called bullshit.

Rodimus sagged a little as the last of the adrenaline wore off and every bruise made itself known in stereo. “I mean … yeah, I’m a little, y’know. Pummeled. Not my first rodeo, though. I’ll be okay. Really.”

Megatron harrumphed at him. It sounded like a backfiring Studebaker.

“How are those ribs feeling?”

“Ribs?” Rodimus shrugged and then wished he hadn’t. Ow. Dammit. “Uh, fine. Just fine.”

“Kid, you are the worst liar I’ve met in a long time.” Megatron pushed his specs up enough to rub the bridge of his nose in clear exasperation, though the intended recipient of said exasperation was more opaque. “Come on, I don’t want to hang around here any longer than I have to.” He turned and strode away, leaving Rodimus to gape briefly before scrambling to catch up.

They walked in silence for a few minutes before Rodimus cleared his throat awkwardly. “So, uh,” he started, eyes firmly on the ground in front of his feet, “where did you ... learn to fight like that?”

Megatron was silent for a moment, but when Rodimus snuck a glance at him, his jaw was clenched and his face was set in hard, desolate lines.

“Prison,” Megatron gritted out eventually, and increased his pace enough that they were no longer side-by-side.

Silence was the only response that seemed appropriate.


	8. Burden of Care

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rodimus got himself lightly mashed. For once, however, there's someone there to patch him back up.

Rodimus hung back, uncharacteristically uncertain, as Megatron unlocked the door to his apartment and then stepped aside, gesturing curtly.

“Go on.”

Rodimus slunk through the open door and paused, hands jammed tightly into his pockets, as Megatron entered behind him and threw the deadbolt in what was obviously a long-cultivated habit. Rodimus twitched slightly at the metallic clunk, and Megatron cocked a sardonic eyebrow at him as he passed into the apartment’s meager kitchen.

“Have a seat, kid.” A cabinet door thunked open and closed, followed by a rush of water from the tap, and Megatron returned with two glasses of water, one of which he inserted firmly into Rodimus’s hand before leading the way to a battered sofa.

“I’m not actually a kid, y’know,” Rodimus said mildly as he sat, careful not to spill the water on himself or anything else – unsurprisingly, the room was spartan in its furnishing and lack of personal touches, aside from the plethora of neatly-sorted books on the floor-to-ceiling shelving on one wall.

“Are you under thirty?”

Rodimus hunched his shoulders defensively. “… yeah, okay.”

Megatron’s smirk spoke volumes. “Wait here,” he ordered, and vanished into the apartment’s only actual room with a door.

Rodimus slurped his water glumly and looked around, but the place really was almost utterly devoid of any insights into its occupant, and after a moment he sighed and slumped back into the sofa and closed his eyes. The bruises and cuts were really aching at this point, and a bag of frozen peas was rising higher and higher on his priority list. In the background, soft rustling noises probably indicated that Megatron was looking for something; if Rodimus was really lucky, that something would include some heavy-duty painkillers.

Rodimus cracked open an eye as the couch cushion beside him shifted under a light weight, but instead of Megatron’s craggy scowl he was confronted with a pair of luminous yellow eyes in a triangular black face, topped off with the most condescending glare he’d ever seen.

“GYAH!” Rodimus bolted upright and then groaned as bruised ribs caught up to him and punished him severely for the error of his ways.

“What …?” Megatron stepped quickly out of the other room, a battered first aid kit in hand, and took in the tableau – Rodimus pressed defensively into the arm of the couch, and a huge black cat calmly monopolizing the rest as it washed its feet with studied nonchalance.

“… oh. That’s Ravage.”

Rodimus looked askance at the enormous cat. The enormous cat yawned ostentatiously, showing off a curl of pink tongue and an impressive array of gleaming predatory dental equipment.

“Appropriate name.”

“He belonged to an old friend.” Megatron set the first aid kit on the coffee table in front of the couch, pushing aside a stack of books to do so, and settled himself on the couch where Ravage currently reigned supreme. Ravage moved out of his way with the air of a grand vizier making way for his potentate, losing not an iota of dignity in the process. “Gave him to me to keep me company after I …” He hesitated. “After I was released.”

Rodimus nodded, keeping his gaze steadily on the big graceful hands opening the first aid kit, taking out ointment and bandages, arranging them neatly on the table. “That’s … that’s good. That you … y’know, have someone. For company.”

“Mmh.” Megatron opened a pack of alcohol swabs and brandished them in Rodimus’s direction. “Hold still.”

Rodimus held, though the alcohol burned like the Pit in the cuts where Big Mac Triple’s knuckles had opened the skin, made his eyes water and his nose run; but Megatron’s hands were warm and gentle and steady, and the drying blood had been terribly itchy, and being looked after by someone like this was such a change of pace and such a relief, frankly; and he sank into a quiet, receptive lethargy while his face was gently cleaned and a butterfly closure carefully placed across the worst cut on his cheekbone.

Dimly, Rodimus became aware that the motion of hands on his face had stopped and been replaced by a warm, infinitely light pressure, the barest ghost of a caress. He let his eyes drift open; let a slow, sleepy smile curve his mouth. 

Megatron’s eyes widened and a tremor ran through the hand against Rodimus’s cheek. Rodimus hummed softly and nuzzled against hand and wrist. Megatron’s throat clicked as he struggled to swallow.

“I shouldn’t be doing this.” The deep harsh voice had dropped to a nearly subvocal rumble. “I shouldn’t …” But oh, he ached to; Rodimus could see that in every line of his body, feel it in every tiny tremor in his hand, hear it in the rasp if his voice.

Rodimus smiled up at him, cupped his hand over the one on his cheek. “You should,” he said, and his own voice was low and intimate and purring in a way very few people ever heard. “You absolutely should.”


	9. Kings of Wishful Thinking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drift is King of Granola. He is also quite good at getting more information out of Rodimus than Rodimus is aware of.

He was humming again.

Drift busied himself with refilling the hard winter wheat bulk bin, and smiled. Rodimus was entirely too pleased with himself for a guy who had clearly been punched in the face the previous evening – and the ribs, if the occasional catch in his movement was to be believed – but he was acting like the cat who had gotten both the canary and the cream, and Drift was currently plotting how best to get the story out of him.

Mind you, there was still work to be done; Bulk wasn’t going to refill itself, after all, and after that he needed to check Produce and pull anything past its sell-by date, and then he needed to check with Receiving to make sure the new order of Himalayan salt lamps had arrived …

“Hey, man,” Rodimus interrupted himself mid-hum, “you gonna be done soon or what?”

“Might go faster with help,” Drift pointed out mildly, and deftly tipped twenty pounds of dry red lentils into their designated dispenser without spilling.

“Pfft.” Rodimus draped himself over the pallet-lifter’s handle and gestured dismissively. “I just clocked out, dude; not real eager to sling your peas in my free time.”

“Isn’t it my turn to buy?”

Rodimus flipped himself upright and barged into Drift’s space like a man with a Bulk Dry Goods-based mission. “Shove over and gimme that granola.”

* 

“Soooo …” Drift prompted, once they were securely ensconced in their usual booth and Rodimus was working through a chocolate milkshake with the enthusiasm of one for whom ice cream headaches were a non-event.

“So?”

“So what happened last night?” Drift was aiming for casual and missed completely. Rod blushed scarlet all the way to his ears, and began scrutinizing the coaster under his milkshake as though it held the secrets to redemption.

“Nothing! Uh.” Congressional budgets were subjected to less scrutiny than this coaster. “Nothing … last night? Um, nope, nothing … nothing happened.” Eye contact was carefully avoided as Rodimus aligned the edge of the coaster parallel to the edge of the table. “Um. Why do you ask?”

Drift smirked. “’Cause that’s one hell of a shiner for ‘nothing.’” Rod twitched guiltily. “You gonna tell me you, what, fell out of bed? Walked into a cabinet? Tried to open a beer bottle with your eye socket again?”

“Hey, that was one time!” Rodimus shot back, pride obviously stung.

“For which one?”

“The, uh. The beer bottle one.” He cleared his throat and slumped a little. “But no, I … there was a fight.”

“And you stopped it with your face?”

“No, I … guess I kind of started it with my face, actually.” Rodimus grinned crookedly, eyes still fixed on the coaster; but some of the tension had eased from his shoulders. “There was this homeless guy, see, and a group of drunk losers, and …” he shrugged eloquently. “You can probably figure out the rest.”

Drift propped his chin on one fist and looked at his friend. “You ever gonna take me up on that offer, or am I just gonna have to watch you gimp around after getting sucker-punched every weekend?”

“You mean the dojo?”

“No, I mean the discount card at Whole Foods … fuck, man, of course I mean the dojo!”

Rod rubbed the back of his neck and squirmed unhappily. “I know, Drift, I just … that’s not really my crowd, y’know?” He grimaced. “Also, your sensei is scary as fuck.”

“He’s just really intense.”

Rodimus gave Drift a gimlet-eyed glare. “Scary. As. Fuck,” he insisted, punctuating each word with a drippy chocolate thrust of his milkshake straw.

“He’s a great, teacher, though. I mean, you gotta have that kind of intensity, right? You gotta feel the energy and make the discipline part of you, like it’s in your bones and your blood, you know?”

Rodimus was well familiar with the signs of Drift warming up to an extended monologue on the topic, and gently forestalled him before he could really get into it. “I know, Drift, I totally get that and I respect it, but it’s just not me, y’know? That kind of discipline and commitment … it’s not who I am.”

Drift made a rude noise and gave Rodimus his own gimlet glare. “That’s bullshit, Rod, and you know it.”

Rodimus sat up straight, honestly taken aback by Drift’s sudden change in tone, and opened his mouth to object; but Drift steamrollered him and kept going, serious and intent in a way he rarely showed without a sword in each hand.

“You’re trying to tell me you don’t demonstrate discipline and commitment? Fuck that noise. You may not be committed to an ideal or a goal that society set for you, but you sure as hell are committed to one you set for yourself.

“You think someone who doesn’t do discipline and commitment is going around with a black eye and bruised ribs ‘cause he stopped some thugs from beating on a homeless man? Week after week? You think that guy doesn’t go hungry or go late on his bills sometimes because he gave his paycheck to the soup kitchen again? Think that guy’s friends don’t have to nurse his dumb ass through pneumonia because he gave his winter coat to a homeless teenager in a bus station?” Drift reached across the table to cup one hand around the back of his friend’s neck and squeeze gently. “That’s totally who you are, dumbass. I just wanna help you keep doing it, preferably without getting that dumb ass handed to you so often.”

Rodimus let the hand shake him gently, and rocked with it. “I … yeah, okay. I hear you. I just … don’t think about it that way, you know? I’m not trying to be, I don’t know, a hero or something; I just …” He shrugged. “I just want to help.”

“Yeah.” Drift let go and sat back as the server approached and deposited barbeque ribs – Rodimus – and a kale and spinach salad with avocado oil and apple cider vinegar on the side – Drift – in front of them. “Well, so do I.”

They ate in companionable silence for a moment. “So,” Drift chased a piece of kale around his plate. “Just another fight, then?”

“Yep.”

Drift waited until Rodimus had a mouthful of Coke before continuing. “Hell of a blush for ‘just another fight.’”

Rodimus choked but managed to avoid an actual spit-take. “What?! What blush?” 

“That one.” Drift grinned wryly. “Dude, don’t even try to front; I’ve seen you play poker, remember?”

“You mean cleaned me out at poker, you dick.” Rodimus poked at a puddle of barbeque sauce with a french fry and tried to look grumpy, but the sneaky little smile that kept trying to break free and sneak a dimple into his cheek told Drift pretty much everything that Rodimus carefully wasn’t.

Well. About fucking time.


	10. The Man Comes Around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clearly, the midst of an existential crisis is the perfect time for your parole officer to drop by.

He was daydreaming again.

Well. Daydreaming was probably not quite the right word; Megatron had spent the morning alternating between very carefully thinking of absolutely nothing at all, and staggering dazedly around the apartment, clutching a mug of coffee in both hands, like a concussed mayfly bouncing off an underpowered bug zapper. Ravage had finally given up on him in disgust and was napping pointedly in the middle of the kitchen counter, the one place in the apartment he was not supposed to be.

Megatron snapped himself out of it again, scowled at the tepid coffee in his (blue, Rodimus had painted it blue to match his own red one – STOP IT) mug, and stalked into the kitchen to dump it in the sink with as much violence as possible before refilling it from the pot and wandering back out, not even noticing Ravage on the counter.

Ravage flicked his tail in the feline equivalent of a shrug, and rolled over onto his back to take advantage of the opportunity.

Megatron, meanwhile, was well into another cycle of pacing and forgetting about his coffee; being fully aware of said cycle; being utterly disgusted with himself; and being completely unable to do anything to break out of it.

For fuck’s sake, it was just a kiss. Just one, single, simple, extremely chaste kiss. Just one achingly brief brush of soft warm lips, one moment of his hand cupping Roddy’s cheek, one sweet inviting smile ...

Just one kiss, and decades of self control were swept away in the tsunami of longing and loneliness and need that broke free from the wreckage, iron will and restraint devastated by the impact of simple human contact.

*

“I shouldn’t be doing this.” Megatron could barely hear his own voice, it had dropped so low; could only feel the vibration in his throat that echoed the tremor in his hand where it hovered tentatively against Rodimus’s cheek. “I shouldn’t …” God, the litany of things he shouldn’t be doing was fucking endless; touching Rodimus at all, to say nothing of touching him with such tender intimacy, was not even the first thing on that list, and Megatron knew it and could do nothing but fall into those blue, blue eyes.

That lovely, expressive mouth curved into a smile so warmly welcoming that it knocked the remaining air out of his lungs and left him utterly breathless, and Rodimus breathed into him in reply. “You should. You absolutely should.”

There was no air left between them, and then no space, as they fell together like colliding stars, as inevitable as gravity, and for all that the kiss was a bare, brief sweep of lips and nothing more, entire galaxies blazed to life and died in that infinitesimal span of time; and by the time it was done, Megatron was utterly and completely lost.

*

Megatron stumbled over the coffee table, realized that he had once again been lost in dumbfounded recollection and that his coffee was once again cold, and stomped back into the kitchen again.

Ravage opened one eye in languid contemplation from his belly-up sprawl. Megatron was still sufficiently discombobulated that he just stared at the cat for a moment before rolling his eyes with a huff and banging his coffee mug into the microwave.

There was a knock at the door at the same time as the microwave’s beep. Megatron experienced a moment of wild hope that it was Rodimus and then devoted the time spent walking to the door to cursing himself creatively and with vicious disgust for acting like the moon-struck dumbass teenager he hadn’t been in decades.

Opening the door did not improve matters in the slightest. Instead of red hair and blue eyes and a sweet, eager grin, Megatron was faced with the noble-yet-steely-eyed visage of Orion Pax. Apparently it was time for a visit from his parole officer.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

Megatron used every inch of his stature and breadth to fill the doorway as commandingly as possible, and waited for the other man to speak.

“Megatron.” That deep, solemn voice rolled through the hallway like the bastard was standing at a pulpit, warning the thronging sinners of the terrible fate awaiting them if they failed to attend their court-mandated check-ins. “I had expected you to be at work at this hour.”

“It’s my day off.” Megatron refused to be cowed in the slightest. “As you well know,” he added dryly, “given that you signed off on my schedule yourself.”

“Yes, well.” Something that might have been trying to be a rueful smile crossed Orion’s face briefly; Megatron was far too cynical to credit it as the genuine article. “It’s generally been the case that I find you there even on your days off, so you can understand my confusion.”

Megatron refused to give an inch. “It shouldn’t be that much of a surprise; you have seen this apartment.”

“Fair enough.” Orion shrugged neutrally and gestured toward the door. “Well. While I’m here, let’s get caught up, shall we?”

It was not a suggestion, and Megatron knew damn well what would happen if he decided to play dumb; with a grunt of grudging acquiescence, he stepped back out of the doorway and let Orion in.

Orion stepped in, removed his shades, and looked around with studied carelessness – Megatron also knew damn well that it was a total sham and the bastard was casing the apartment. A more hands-on search would be forthcoming, of course, but for now the pretense of civility was still in place. He remained standing beside the door, body language carefully relaxed and non-threatening, as his parole officer settled into his routine.

Ravage chose this moment to saunter into the room, give Orion a dismissive once-over, and then plop down in the middle of the floor to hoist a leg and perform gratuitously enthusiastic personal hygiene. Megatron suppressed a smirk. Orion suppressed an expression of dismay and horror.

“Right, well.” Orion squared his shoulders and strode into the kitchen, moving on to the shake-down portion of the morning’s entertainment. “How is work going? Have you, uh … settled in well?”

Megatron ground his teeth at the sound of drawers being opened and shut, their contents briefly riffled; he had hated this lack of privacy in prison and he hated it even more now, here where he had the illusion of security and freedom. Sometimes he genuinely wondered whether early release and parole were worth the aggravation; but honestly, Orion seemed to be the best of a bad lot. He was polite and respectful, given the constraints of their relationship; did not abuse or threaten those under his watch; and compared to prison’s constant threat of violence from both inmates and wardens, painfully regimented schedules, crushing boredom, and excruciatingly bad coffee, being on parole really had a lot to recommend it.

“Yes,” said Megatron. “No complaints on either side.” 

“That’s good.” Orion cast a brief, uninterested glance at the red mug (Rodimus’s mug, he’d painted both mugs himself as a gift, as something kind done for no reason or ulterior motive, just a gift for a friend – maybe more than a friend? – STOP IT) before passing down the hall to the bedroom. Furniture creaked – sounded like Orion was checking under the mattress and around the bedframe. Please. As though Megatron would make that kind of mistake if he was trying to hide something.

“Made any friends yet?” Orion continued, still fossicking about in the bedroom. Megatron hoped that the stultifying dullness of his wardrobe would be boring enough to cut this farce short, but knew the thought for folly even as it crossed his mind; Orion was thorough and patient and would leave no t-shirt unturned.

“No.” Even if he had – had he? Maybe? Maybe something more, even? – he wasn’t answering that one. None of your fucking business, cop.

It was easy to forget, given Orion’s honest, open face and friendly demeanor, that he was a law enforcement officer; that he was, basically, The Man, or at least the hand and arm of The Man, depending; that he was, fundamentally, Megatron’s enemy. Orion could not be trusted – his job was to keep an eye on Megatron, to make sure that he toed the line and avoided any and all transgression, and to threaten and possibly punish Megatron, largely at Orion’s discretion, should any transgression occur. It was Orion who would testify in court with any scrap of evidence or information that Megatron might let slip, should the need arise. It was Orion, right now, who controlled Megatron’s fate; and Megatron hated him for it.

Orion looked genuinely sad for a moment, and Megatron ground his teeth again and steeled himself against giving a flying fuck what the lying sack of shit might or might not be feeling. “I’m sorry to hear that,” and fuck but didn’t that deep voice sound genuinely sincere. “I had hoped …”

Megatron let the sentence die and made no effort to revive it, standing quiet and impassive while Orion completed his search; replying monosyllabically to the few perfunctory questions Orion posed; and eventually Orion bent silently to his task and let the silence lie.

Searching the shitty little apartment was generally not a drawn-out affair, if for no other reason than the damn thing being so small, but Megatron’s dreams of a speedy end to this particular social call were denied. Orion, instead of taking his leave promptly and buggering the fuck on out of there, paused by the door and looked at Megatron with an impressively good sad-puppy face for a man that big and sporting that quality and acreage of chin.

“I know we’re not friends,” said Orion, and Megatron stifled the bark of derisive laughter that so wanted to escape; “and I know you’re not interested in any advice I might offer; but from my time on the force I can tell you that it’s the people who make an active effort to rejoin society who are more likely to stay out of jail. I –“ He paused, struggling for words, and Megatron was struck suddenly by the honest weariness in Orion’s face and voice. “I know you have no reason to believe me, but I really do want you to succeed.”

Megatron was quiet for a moment. All the angry words he wanted to throw at this man, all the accusations, all the rage … they were still there, in his heart and in his mind, simmering; the resentment and fury had never faded, might never fade; but if time and fortune had taught Megatron anything, it was how to pick his battles.

“Thank you,” and Orion’s eyes widened in shock – whatever he’d been expecting Megatron to say, that clearly wasn’t it. “I … shall consider your advice.”

A genuine smile briefly lit Orion’s face as he turned to leave. “That’s … that’s good to hear.” He opened the exterior door, donning mirrored aviators like a battle mask as he slipped fully into Cop Persona. “See you soon.”

“Lucky me.” Megatron closed the door, threw the deadbolt, and stomped into the kitchen to re-nuke his coffee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the title is a nod to the song by Johnny Cash.


	11. Feels Like Dancing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drift is not the only one tired of seeing Rodimus get beat up.

“You know, when I said the place could use some art, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

Rodimus circled the cylindrical black monolith warily, as though expecting it to fall on him despite being chained to the ceiling – or possibly as though it might lunge at him with no warning, hence the chains.

“How’s that?” Muffled thumping from the bedroom indicated Megatron was probably looking for something.

“Well, you know.” Rodimus grinned at Megatron, who was walking back into the living room with what looked like several rolls of Ace bandages in his hands. “Black monoliths. They’re so 2001, dude.”

Megatron stared at him for a moment before shaking his head. “That was terrible.”

“What? No, c’mon, that was brilliant! Just ‘cause you didn’t get it …” Roddy cocked his head to one side and watched as Megatron set three of the bandage rolls on the coffee table and then proceeded to unroll the fourth with a flick of his wrist that caused the bandage – was it a bandage? – to unspool smoothly across the floor before being drawn back through his hands. “So, uh … what is that, anyway?”

“Hand wraps.” There was a loop on one end, Rodimus realized, which Megatron slid over his thumb before beginning to wrap his hand – wrist, knuckles, between the fingers, around the thumb, back over knuckles and around again; the motions of his hands and wrists did interesting things to the muscles in his arms, and Rodimus found his attention drawn more to that than the hand wrapping process.

Megatron finished by tucking the loose end under one of the layers at his wrist, and then realized where Roddy’s attention had actually been. “I’ll do it for you the first time, but you’ll have to do your own after that, so you probably want to watch this one more closely.”

Rodimus blushed, nodded, and paid better attention as Megatron wrapped his other hand. And then … well, he tried, he really did, he tried to pay attention as his own hands were wrapped, but Megatron’s hands were so big, and so warm, and the smooth rhythmic motion was almost hypnotic, and the times they had touched were still so few and far between …

By the time both his hands were wrapped, Rodimus was pink-cheeked and sweaty and slightly out of breath, and they hadn’t even started doing … well, whatever the hell it was they were going to be doing.

Megatron answered the unspoken question by stepping back and holding out one hand, palm toward Rodimus. “Okay. I want to see you throw a punch.”

Rodimus opted to throw a small tantrum instead. “Seriously? You too?! The fuck, man?”

One of those craggy eyebrows went up. “I take it from your reaction that I’m not the first person to do this lately?”

Roddy scuffed one foot aggressively against the threadbare carpet and refused to meet Megatron’s gaze. “Drift’s been after me again to come to the dojo.”

Megatron looked thoughtful. “I see. Well. I know Drift means well, but I don’t actually think that his dojo is what you need right now.” Rodimus’s head snapped up and he stared at Megatron in obvious surprise. Megatron smirked. “What, you thought I’d agree with him? Drift is many things, including a brilliant fighter; but he tends to forget that not everyone experiences things the way he does … in this case, his lack of a learning curve.”

“I don’t … understand,” Rodimus admitted slowly.

“Drift learns certain things very quickly,” Megatron explained. “Martial arts, for example. I suspect he isn’t thinking about the fact that it would take you years of study in that particular art to get to the point where it would actually help you in a street fight.”

“So …” Rodimus held up his wrapped hands. “So what is this about, then?”

“This is about me teaching you how to throw a punch,” said Megatron. “And hopefully how to avoid taking one in the face.”

Rodimus hackled, pride stinging. “I know how to throw a fucking punch!”

Megatron held up his hand again. “Then show me.”

Rodimus clenched his fists and threw the hardest punch he could. Megatron absorbed it, stone-faced, and held up his other hand. “Again.”

Rodimus obliged until he was panting and sweaty and his hands and wrists ached. Megatron finally stepped back, looking thoughtful again, and went to the kitchen to retrieve two glasses of water.

He handed one to Rodimus. “The good news is that you’re not completely hopeless.”

“Cheers,” Roddy drawled sarcastically, and drained his glass.

Megatron continued as though he hadn’t noticed the interruption. “You’re not very big, but you’re strong for your size, and quick, and agile. That’s good – that will help even the playing field. But most of the people you’re going to run up against are going to be a lot bigger than you are, and a lot stronger. You’re going to need better technique if you want to defend yourself – or anyone else,” he added pointedly.

Rodimus took a deep breath. Okay. That actually … was pretty nice to hear, especially from Crabby Old Huge Bruiser, there. Megatron wasn’t saying that he sucked or that he was helpless, just that he needed better technique. And, well, given that no one had ever actually taught Rodimus to fight, that was a perfectly reasonable critique.

He nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah.” He grinned up at Crabby Old Huge Bruiser – his crabby old huge bruiser, thank you very much – and held up his fists. “So what’s first?”

What was first was apparently how to stand – Rodimus was right-handed, so Megatron prodded him into position with his left foot forward, left shoulder forward, fists up by his cheeks, elbows down to protect his ribs – and then being forced to maneuver without crossing his feet, without straightening out of a slight crouch, and without dropping his hands. Megatron emphasized this last one by tapping him lightly on the cheek every time it happened, which was fine the first few times but quickly became really fucking annoying.

“Do you have to keep doing that?” he finally snapped, as Megatron once again tagged him during yet another circuit around the living room. By this point, Roddy had sweat pooling at the small of his back and dripping off his ears. Megatron, damn him, was barely warmed up.

“Apparently so,” said Megatron, and tapped him on the other cheek.

“How long?!” Rodimus dodged the next tap and got his hands back up, maneuvering as best he could with his quads on fucking fire.

“Until you stop dropping your hands.” Megatron reached out to tap him again, but Roddy got his hands back up in time. Megatron nodded approvingly. “Getting punched in the face is, as you well know, not necessarily going to knock you out; but it’s distracting, and it can stun you, and it’s better not to let it happen in the first place.”

“Yeah …” Rodimus panted and stepped back, hands held out in entreaty. “Yeah. I gotcha. Can I have a break before my legs fall off, though? And maybe some more water?”

Megatron nodded graciously. “Go ahead. After you’ve had a break, I’ll show you how to actually throw a punch.”

Actually punching things – in this case, the monolithic heavy bag that Megatron had hung up, and Rodimus resolved not to think about him hoisting the damn thing up onto its hook (and how much raw strength that had to require) until he was home alone, possibly in the shower – was honestly a lot more fun than being chased around the living room. Megatron showed him some basic punches and had him practice; patiently corrected his stance and body position; and after a while Rodimus could feel some of the rhythms and motions beginning to settle into his body. The way his shoulder needed to roll, the way to move his hips to power the blow, the way to land a punch without bending his wrist and torqueing the fuck out of it – it was almost like dancing, this being completely present in his body; and even though he knew he was going to hurt like hell in the morning, Rodimus found himself grinning at Megatron through the sweat burning his eyes.

Megatron smiled back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is a reference to the book "It's a Lot Like Dancing" by Terry Dobson, and of course to the song "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" by the Bee Gees.


	12. Lost and Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Into every life, a little rain must fall.
> 
> Or possibly a lot of rain, depending on the time of year and whether you remember your umbrella.

He was early again.

Rung snuck a glance at Megatron, currently sorting mail with his default scowl – some people had resting bitch-face; Megatron had resting I-will-kill-you-all face, which was a new one for Rung – and huffed quietly to himself. Model employee, even ignoring the whole requirements-of-parole issue. Came in early, stayed late, caused no trouble, and was quietly respectful to Rung in a way that one might not expect, given the man’s frankly imposing stature and the unmistakable aura of command that he still carried. Megatron generally didn’t interact with any of their clients, more because he was freaking scary than because Rung didn’t trust him, although having someone that big on the employee list did come in handy when one of their clients was having trouble and needed protection.

All in all, Rung mused as he updated his appointment list, being assigned a parolee could have been infinitely worse.

Now if only he could find a way to help the poor bastard.

As far as Rung could tell, Megatron had no friends, no social life, no contact with other people outside of work. He occasionally spoke of old friends, but in a manner which made it fairly obvious that contacting them was unwise in light of his current situation, and showed absolutely no interest in expanding his social circle beyond … well, Rung and Ravage, apparently. Which, again – not easy to make friends when you’re a 6’6 ex-con and your parole officer is hovering over you like a particularly anxious helicopter, but still.

The door chimed softly, and Rung glanced up to see that his first client of the day had arrived. He carefully tucked his Megatron-related musings to the back of his mind and turned his full attention to the nervous teenager in front of him; Rung had a job to do, and his professional pride required nothing less than his very best effort for each and every person to come through his door.

*

Megatron finished sorting the mail, set a new pot of coffee to brew – Rung went through the stuff even faster than he did, which was pretty impressive given that the guy was about half Megatron’s size and never showed the slightest hint of caffeine shakes – and logged in to his terminal to work on data entry while waiting for it to percolate. The job was staggeringly dull most of the time – he was basically an office manager, for Christ’s sake – but at least it was in a field that meant something to him.

Megatron cast a brief glance at the kid being lead into Rung’s private office, and grimaced in poorly-concealed rage. Kid, definitely – much younger than Rodimus, even, probably not even eighteen yet – and showing every sign of having been on the street for a while. Runaway, or more likely kicked out. Malnourished, too, and probably had been even before becoming homeless – what the fuck, why did some people think they could starve gender identity out of a kid?

There was a faint creaking noise, and Megatron hastily released the crushing grip he’d been inflicting on the arm of his chair before he actually broke the damn thing again. The world had changed, he reminded himself; it had changed while he’d been rotting in jail; and even if it hadn’t changed enough – even if this shit was still happening, even if there were still fuckheads shooting up night clubs and fuck all else – it had changed.

_It changed because people stood up and fought_ , he thought grimly, _because we rioted and threw bottles and fought back again and again; not by becoming part of the system that tried to wipe us out or pretend we didn’t exist. How’s that system working for you, Orion? Are you happy living only half your life?_

Megatron took a deep breath and stepped back before he could go too far down that road – not here, not now. He had work to do, and even if he couldn’t help as directly as someone like Rung could, there were still ways of fighting. He picked up the phone and dialed a familiar number.

“Drift? What’s the word on your store’s food bank donation policy?”

*

Rodimus looked out the door and winced. Checking the weather forecast before leaving home really, really needed to become a higher priority; what had been merely threatening earlier in the day had become a solid downpour, and he was once again without an umbrella.

And, of course, since he’d been working late to get this installation done for tomorrow, the buses had stopped running by now.

Of course.

Rodimus sighed, flipped up the collar of his jacket in a pitiable attempt to ward off the rain, locked the gallery door, and stepped out into the deluge. At least it was a warm summer night – earlier in the season, this would have really sucked.

He’d been keeping his head down as he walked, both to avoid rain in his face and to enjoy the glittering shattered reflections of neon and sodium-vapor lights in the droplet-raddled puddles, and as a result he almost didn’t see the big guy stepping out of a door in front of him, apparently doing the same closing routine Rodimus had done himself.

Rodimus jolted out of the way, splashing through an ankle-deep puddle that finished the mostly-complete job of utterly saturating his Chuck Taylors, and started to stammer out an apology before coming to an abrupt halt. “Megs?”

Megatron, who had been intent on ignoring the sodden figure until and unless it actually collided with him, looked up from locking the door with almost as much surprise. “Rodimus? What are you doing here?”

“Walking home.” Rodimus grinned crookedly. “Well. More like squishing home. If it rains any harder I’m gonna have to stop and build an ark, seriously.” He peered at what he could see of the door around Megatron’s bulk. “Hey, is this where you work? That’s awesome! I didn’t know you worked so close to the gallery; maybe we could meet up sometime!” He paused, and then added ruefully, “Like now, maybe, except without the, y’know, vertical drowning.”

Megatron frowned at him, but it didn’t seem to be an angry frown, or an “I hate that idea” frown, or even a “god you’re an idiot” frown; Rodimus didn’t have tremendous experience yet in classifying Megatron’s many and varied frowns, but this one seemed to be on the thoughtful end of the spectrum.

“How much farther do you have to go?”

Rodimus looked around to orient himself, and sighed inwardly in resignation. “Um … about ten more blocks this way, and then a couple miles south.” He shrugged. “Usually not a big deal; I like the walk. Probably should start carrying an umbrella, though, huh?”

The possibly-thoughtful frown deepened, and then Megatron sighed in heartfelt exasperation and rubbed the bridge of his nose; Rodimus wasn’t sure, but it almost seemed like the exasperation was directed at Megatron himself, and not toward Rodimus.

“My apartment is closer.” Megatron turned and began walking, clearly expecting Rodimus to follow him; when Rodimus stood gaping at him instead, he turned briefly to cast a glare over his shoulder. “Well? Come on, then.”

Heart in his throat, Rodimus splashed through the bucketing rain to catch up with Megatron. He was soaked to the bone and the chill was definitely seeping into his core … and yet there was a warm little spark in there too, and Rodimus had to tuck his head to hide his smile.


	13. Crashing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rodimus crashes on the couch. Megatron fails to deal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Directly inspired by @weirdhawk's gorgeous art:
> 
> http://weirdhawk.tumblr.com/post/160942965065/he-did-know-it-was-gonna-rain

He was staring again.

Megatron found himself peering around the corner at the small huddled shape on his couch for the third time in ten minutes, kicked himself mentally – again – and stormed into the bedroom. If the storming was among the quietest storming ever achieved in Western civilization, well, maybe he just didn’t feel like storming loudly at the moment; and that was entirely his decision to make and was completely uninfluenced by the presence or absence of any theoretical couch-dwelling guests, so there.

The fact that he returned from the bedroom with a blanket, which he then tucked around the small huddled shape on his couch with as much care and gentleness as he could muster was … well, it was just going to go unremarked and devoid of analysis. Forever, if at all possible.

Megatron stood watching the slow, even breathing of his couch-dwelling guest – interloper! Not guest, never guest; guest implied desire for the person’s company and too many other dangerous, terrible things – until he disgusted himself beyond bearing and retreated back to the bedroom and solitude. Blessed, peaceful, uncomplicated solitude.

It took an unreasonable amount of time to fall asleep in that blessed, peaceful, uncomplicated solitude. Presumably he had managed it eventually, though, since his alarm was beeping quietly and Ravage was sitting in his usual 5:30AM location – i.e. directly on Megatron’s chest, boring into his soul with the affronted glare of someone who has had to wait an unacceptably long time to be acknowledged, to say nothing of being fed.

Megatron grumbled at the cat, who stepped regally off Megatron’s chest and onto the pillow by his head, prepared to deploy the whiskers-in-the-ear maneuver should the Bringer of Food fail to obey his summons; stared morosely at the ceiling for a moment; and then decided that waiting would avail him nothing more than a cold nose and whiskers in his ear, and certainly do nothing to remove the current source of his consternation, who was almost certainly still asleep on the couch.

Rodimus was indeed still asleep on the couch, still wrapped in the blanket and breathing slowly, peacefully; long, coppery lashes fanned out over his cheeks …

Megatron retreated hastily to the kitchen. This clearly called for coffee. And maybe waffles. But definitely coffee.

*

Rodimus woke slowly to the knowledge that he was in a strange place – the pillow under his cheek was too rough, the surface on which he was lying too lumpy (though strangely familiar for all that) – and elected to lie still for a moment while his brain caught up.

Something tickled his nose during the rebooting process. He opened his eyes to see a dark grey blanket draped over him. The color was severe and not terribly welcoming to his groggy senses, but the blanket itself was warm and wonderfully, unexpectedly soft; he pulled it a little tighter around himself to snuggle in its blissful coziness a moment longer before stretching and sitting up.

Oh yeah, he knew this couch, all right. This horrible, lumpy couch, and this depressingly bare little room, and this awful threadbare carpet that its owner kept immaculately clean but even that couldn’t redeem its awfulness … 

Rodimus looked around Megatron’s living room, and petted the soft blanket a little absently as he thought about the night before, and how he had come to be here, and what it might mean.

Introspection, however, would have to wait until after the enticing scent of coffee and waffles was investigated. Roddy carefully folded the blanket over the arm of the couch and padded barefoot over to the tiny kitchen.

Megatron had clearly been up for some time, based on the size of the stack of waffles he’d produced so far, and was staring fixedly at the waffle maker’s little red indicator light with the air of a man who was sincerely wishing he had not quit smoking. As Rodimus watched, the long, scarred fingers of one hand twitched in a characteristic gesture toward Megatron’s mouth before curling into a fist on the counter beside the hard-working waffle maker.

Rodimus shuffled his feet and bit his lip. “Um. Morning?”

*

Megatron carefully did not look at the erstwhile occupant of his couch. “Coffee?”

“Please?” said Rodimus. Megatron diverted his attention from the waffle maker long enough to fill the other mug – the red mug, the one that matched his blue one (STOP IT) – and place it on the counter within reach.

Rodimus sipped his coffee, and they both stared at the waffle maker like a couple of bomb disposal technicians disarming a pile of C4. “I didn’t think you actually used that thing,” he finally offered.

“Once in a while,” Megatron muttered – on special occasions, whispered a little voice, which he squelched ruthlessly. The indicator light turned green, and he busied himself with the process of waffle removal and batter reloading.

“I, uh.” He could hear Rodimus scuffing his feet – bare feet, no socks (STOP IT) – just an arm’s reach away. “I wanted to say thanks for … for last night. For letting me stay.”

“Think nothing of it.” Megatron glanced over and immediately wished he hadn’t, because Rodimus was all tousled red hair falling in disarray over blue eyes and freckled, blushing cheeks; a sweet, shy smile; and a too-large shirt – Megatron’s shirt – falling off one smooth, freckled shoulder …

Some deeply-buried primal instinct sat up, took notice, and growled its approval at the sight of Megatron’s shirt on the object of his interest. Megatron promptly scruffed the primal instinct, throttled it, hit over the head with a metaphorical skillet, and stuffed it back into its box with a growl of his own.

Rodimus, oblivious to Megatron’s internal scuffle, rubbed one hand over the back of his neck and turned up the wattage on the shy smile. A dimple threatened to appear in one cheek. Megatron hastily turned back to the waffle maker with a ferocious scowl and a determined lock on his suddenly-recalcitrant libido. “Well, uh,” said the source of his libido’s sudden recalcitrance, “still. I really appreciate it. And the loan of the shirt, too – I didn’t realize it was going to rain.”

Unable to put together a cogent response, Megatron silently handed Rodimus a plate of waffles in a desperate attempt to shut him up in a socially-acceptable way. Rodimus beamed. “Waffles! Awesome! Got any syrup?”

“Fridge,” Megatron growled, and turned back to the waffle maker. It was going to be a long morning.


	14. Walk the Line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orion Pax and Megatron have quite a history. Some of it finally comes to light.

He was staring again.

Megatron had to confess, if only to himself, to a mean little stab of satisfaction at the sight of Orion Pax’s utterly gobsmacked expression. His mouth wasn’t actually hanging open like a stunned trout’s, but it was a close thing.

Frankly, the bastard deserved it for just walking in after a peremptory double knock. Megatron and Rodimus hadn’t had a chance to stir from their positions on the horrible couch – Megatron leaning against the arm, reading a book with one long arm flung across the back; Rodimus tucked in beside him, legs folded and bare feet on the cushion as he sketched out concepts for his latest installation piece – before Orion was standing there in the doorway.

There was a moment of stunned silence between the three of them. Megatron eventually decided that it fell to him to break it, since it was technically his apartment.

“Won’t you come in.” It utterly failed to be a question, an invitation, or anything other than witheringly sarcastic.

Orion glared at him. Megatron glared right back and came out the winner in that particular contest.

“Don’t mind if I do.” Orion’s voice was icy with embarrassed rage and something that might almost have been jealousy in someone less overwhelmingly committed to Law and Order and Justice for All. His glare swept the room and settled on Rodimus, who had frozen with the pencil in midair and was desperately wishing he were somewhere else at the moment. “I’m sorry, we’ve not been introduced.” It was clearly not a request.

Megatron rolled his eyes, closed his book, and stood up, careful to extricate himself from Rodimus with as much gentleness as he dared show at the moment. “Oh, dear, where are my manners. Orion Pax, this is Rodimus Prime; Rodimus, this is my parole officer, Orion Pax.”

Rodimus stared at Orion with a distinct deer-in-the-headlights expression. “Uh. Hi?”

“Hi.” Orion’s voice hadn’t thawed measurably, and he stormed into the kitchen in pursuit of Megatron, who had resorted to making coffee as a defensive maneuver. “Thought you said you hadn’t made any friends.”

“Thought it wasn’t really your jurisdiction,” Megatron retorted.

“It’s – that’s not what I mean,” Orion snapped back. “I just … I need you to be honest with me, understand? I want to trust you when you tell me things, but –“

“But you don’t trust me, regardless of what I say or do.” Megatron poured two cups of coffee and shouldered past Orion on his way back to the living room to deposit one cup in front of Rodimus. The other cup – blue, to match Roddy’s red – remained in his hands, and he drank pointedly while Orion was left empty-handed.

The snub did not go unnoticed. A muscle in Orion’s jaw ticked, and then he nodded sharply and strode into the bedroom. Unsubtle banging and thumping issued from the open door; Orion was clearly venting his frustrations on the furniture and Megatron’s incredibly boring wardrobe.

Rodimus looked askance at Megatron, who pointedly rolled his eyes in the direction of the banging drawers – now joined by scraping noises, probably furniture being moved; Orion was apparently upping his toss-the-joint game today – and shrugged eloquently. It wasn’t anything close to an explanation, but Rodimus figured that this wasn’t exactly the best time for a heart-to-heart anyway. He nodded in return and went back to his sketching.

Orion stormed back into the living room empty-handed and clearly not happy about it. “That,” he snapped out, jabbing a finger at the heavy bag hanging in the corner. “Care to explain?”

“It’s a heavy bag,” said Megatron dryly. “It’s for hitting.”

“I know that,” Orion seethed. “Why do you have one in your living room?”

“The bedroom’s too small, and it would just be silly in the bathroom.”

“ _Megatron_.”

“Also, I like hitting things.” Megatron shrugged. “You know this.”

“Take it down,” Orion growled.

Megatron raised an eyebrow and folded his arms. “What? Why?”

Orion stepped in toe to toe, and the few inches he lacked in height on Megatron were mitigated by the stymied fury radiating off him. “Because,” he growled, “I said so. And because I am the one who determines whether you get to keep what little freedom you still have. Am I understood?”

Megatron’s eyes had narrowed during that damning little speech, and the fury radiating off him now rivaled Orion’s. “Yes,” he said, and his voice had dropped to a savage rumble that barely made it to his throat; “I understand.” He stepped around Orion, usual grace eradicated by the tension running through every line of his body; grabbed the chains from which the heavy bag hung on its hook; and lifted it down one-handed with apparently no effort.

Rodimus tried not to swallow his tongue.

Fortunately – or unfortunately – Megatron’s attention was fully focused on his opponent, and with another fulminating glare at Orion, he carried the heavy bag over to the bedroom door and tossed it in with a terminal thud.

Orion returned the glare with interest, jammed his mirrored shades back on his nose, and slammed his way out.

Megatron collapsed abruptly onto the couch as though his strings had just been cut, and sighed heavily. They sat together in silence as their coffee cooled. Ravage wandered in, examined them both critically, and launched himself onto the back of the couch to stretch out with a proprietary paw on each of them.

Oddly, that tiny warm touch on his shoulder made Rodimus feel a little better. “So,” he offered tentatively. “Uh. What the fuck?”

Megatron let his head fall back against the sofa and sighed again. “Orion and I have something of a history.”

Rodimus snorted. “No shit, dude. Was it just me, or did he seem excessively pissed that I was here?”

“Orion has a possessive streak,” Megatron muttered sourly, glaring at the ceiling. “He also has a talent for denial that has seriously bitten him in the ass any number of times.” He rolled his head toward Rodimus, and regarded him with quiet wariness. “And yes, as you probably guessed, we used to be involved.”

“That …” Rodimus paused to consider his words with unusual care. “That sounds really complicated. And like a serious conflict of interest, what the fuck.”

One corner of Megatron’s mouth tugged up in a brief smirk. “Right on both counts.” The smirk dropped and was replaced with … with what, exactly, Rodimus couldn’t tell. Fatigue, maybe, and sorrow, and regret. “This … this goes a long way back, Rodimus. There are a lot of things I haven’t told you yet, that I don’t want to tell you, honestly; I went to prison for a lot of reasons, but most of them boil down to ‘because I deserved it.’” His gaze on Rodimus’s face was calm, almost resigned. “I did terrible things. I can’t ever get away from that. I can’t ever forget it.”

Rodimus was quiet for a moment, staring down into the swirling dregs of his coffee like they might tell his fortune if he looked the right way; he could feel the weight of Megatron’s eyes on him, and as much as he wanted to immediately come back with protestations and reassurances, he knew that doing so wasn’t actually what Megatron needed, and that hearing those things wasn’t actually something he could even trust right now.

Rodimus took a deep breath, put his mug on the coffee table, and turned toward Megatron with his hands laced loosely in his lap. “Okay,” he said quietly. “What things do you want to tell me, then?”

And Megatron told him. He talked about being a teenager in the ‘80’s in a shitty little mining town where everyone – parents, teachers, you name it – had a script already written for him, had his life planned out; that the tall, effortlessly strong kid would of course play football, of course date the cheerleaders, of course go to work in the mines with his daddy and all the rest before him. He talked about applying to college in secret, being accepted, getting a scholarship because of the poetry he wrote in secret, all of it in secret; nothing more secret, though, than being gay; knowing how vital it was to keep that secret until he could get out of that shitty little town and go somewhere – anywhere – else.

He talked about his parents threatening to disown him when they found out he was going to college on a poetry scholarship and actually disowning him when they found out he was gay. He talked about walking onto campus that first day and meeting people who had no script that they wanted to shove him into.

He talked about meeting Orion Pax.

“It … you know, it wasn’t like it is now,” said Megatron intensely, searching Rodimus’s face as he struggled to explain. “Even in a fairly liberal college town, it wasn’t like we could be really openly out without serious repercussions; but it didn’t matter so much to me then. Suddenly I … I had people around me who were _like_ me; do you … you know how that feels, right?” Rodimus nodded fervently; yes, he knew, he knew that sudden breath of air after drowning, feeling his lungs expand and his eyes open and realizing that he could breathe in this space.

Megatron smiled, a tiny fragile thing, and then the grief and exhaustion swept back in and he looked down at his battle-scarred hands. “But … at the same time, there was this rising wave of – of fear and hate, there were people getting sick, dying because they couldn’t get medical care; there was police brutality; there was systemic discrimination and vilification … Orion and I wanted the same thing, we wanted an end to discrimination against all people: race, religion, sexuality, all of it. We didn’t want to see anybody being slotted into little boxes based solely on what their bodies looked like or what other people thought they should be. Freedom is the right of all sentient beings, it was the cornerstone of all our protests and campaigns; by that point we were very political,” he looked rueful for a moment, “and very young and idealistic, of course.” Megatron fell silent, and then took a deep breath. “Orion and I … we wanted the same thing. But we disagreed on how to achieve it. He wanted to work with the system, change it from the inside; and I wanted to tear it all down and start over with a clean slate.” He laughed, but it was a harsh, painful thing aimed inward, with no real humor. “Neither of us had the first idea how to make our goals into reality, of course.”

Rodimus edged a little closer to let his knee just barely brush against Megatron’s thigh, an unspoken offer of support and understanding. One of those big, battle-scarred hands reached out to cover Roddy’s knee in an equally unspoken gesture of gratitude.

“And then … then I met up with him on campus one day, on our way to meet with the student council about representation on campus, and he told me he was joining the police. That he was starting police academy as soon as he graduated next semester – he was getting a degree in criminal justice, you see,” and Megatron’s voice was bitter as aloe, “and he wanted the prestige that would bring him, wanted to get to a position of authority that much sooner. So he could make a _difference_ ,” he spat the word as though it tasted as bitter as it sounded, “that much sooner.”

He went quiet again, the bitterness and rage smoothing out and being replaced by old grief. “We fought,” Megatron continued softly. “I was so angry … I felt like I had been utterly betrayed, like he’d ripped the heart right out of me. We fought, screaming rage and betrayal at each other, and then … and then I went home and packed up all my belongings and left. When he came back – I assume he came back – I was long gone.”

Rodimus scooted a little closer, planning to put his head on Megatron’s shoulder – Christ, this level of intimacy had to be soul-rending for a guy as committedly stoic and stalwartly crusty as Megatron – but was abruptly interrupted by a pointed growl from his stomach.

Rodimus froze, mortified.

Megatron stared at him, honestly taken aback, and then – wonder of wonders – actually laughed a little – just a little – at Rodimus’s expression. Rodimus wondered whether he – maybe both of them – was having a stroke. This day was turning into something so far from what he’d expected that he was totally floundering.

Megatron stood up and collected both coffee mugs. “Come on, we can do this just as easily in the kitchen.”

Rodimus sat on the counter and drank more coffee while Megatron cooked – weird little tuna sandwiches dipped in egg and fried with butter in the skillet, but amazingly delicious with cheap yellow mustard – and talked more, about living on the street, about falling further and further down the rabbit hole; about the gangs and the drugs and the violence; about the first time he’d killed someone.

It was almost three in the morning by then, and they leaned against each other in the tiny, awful kitchen, shoulder to shoulder, like battle-weary soldiers.

Rodimus turned to press his forehead to Megatron’s shoulder, arms sneaking around in a loose embrace, and Megatron returned it with one arm over Roddy’s shoulders, hand cupping the nape of his neck. “I don’t … want to go home right now,” Rodimus whispered.

Megatron took a deep, deep breath. “I don’t want you to, either.” Rodimus looked up as Megatron looked down, and they breathed each other in for a minute, there in the dark kitchen, before Rodimus straightened up to standing, and offered his hand – palm up – to Megatron.

Megatron took it in his own, and – still silent – they went into the bedroom, and closed the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got kinda carried away with those em-dashes, there ...


	15. Man in Black

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can't go back; but if you're lucky, sometimes you can go forward.

He was at the door again.

High degree of certainty that it was him, at least; Orion Pax did tend to have a rather distinctive knock pattern, as Megatron had had ample opportunity to learn.

At least this time he wasn’t just barging in – probably afraid of what he’d find, Megatron thought sourly, and went to grudgingly open the door. After Pax’s last visit, he wasn’t entirely certain what to expect, but it almost certainly wasn’t going to be very pleasant.

At first glance, it seemed like his expectations were going to be met in spades – Orion’s jaw was set and there was tension humming through his frame. On the other hand … 

On the other hand, Orion had already taken off his mirrored sunglasses. As always, his face looked strikingly vulnerable without them; Orion had a notoriously terrible poker face, and without the shades to hide behind, his feelings were easy to read. And Orion knew it.

They stared at each other for a long moment before Orion took a deep breath and asked quietly, “May I come in?”

Holy fuck, did he just _ask_?

Megatron, caught off guard, opened the door further and wordlessly gestured him inside.

There was another moment of awkward staring. Megatron decided that he was under absolutely no obligation to lessen anyone’s awkwardness in this situation, and waited in silence. Orion looked around the shitty little apartment as if hoping that something new would have materialized as a distraction, but Megatron hadn’t even rehung the heavy bag. Orion sighed, those broad shoulders slumping a little in apparent defeat. He opened his mouth to speak.

Megatron tensed.

“I would like to apologize for my behavior.”

Megatron tensed further, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Said footwear failed to precipitate itself. “You what?”

Apparently Megatron’s expression looked almost as gobsmacked as he felt, because a tiny smile briefly quirked Orion’s mouth before fading away again. “I … am sorry for how I behaved the last time I was here. It was inappropriate and uncalled for, and it will not happen again.”

Megatron decided that this was not a conversation he wanted to have while standing in the middle of his pathetic excuse for a living room. He gestured curtly for Orion to sit on the couch, dropping himself carefully onto the opposite end of it. The horrible old couch objected strenuously to its current load, but held up for the time being.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” Megatron admitted reluctantly, “in that I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re trying to accomplish here.”

Orion laughed, but it was a bitter little sound and almost completely humorless. “No, I don’t suppose you would; I haven’t been giving you much reason to trust me. Or to like me,” he added very quietly, and Megatron blinked in disbelief. Easier to believe that the couch had made a random creaking noise eerily resembling human speech than to believe that Orion Pax had just said that.

“I acted inappropriately,” Orion repeated, staring down at his big, work-roughened hands where they rested on his knees. “I was … I was so surprised to see you with … well. With someone. Someone that you apparently trust and are comfortable with, and I was …” Orion’s face twisted a little, in pain and in something less obvious. “I was jealous.”

“You what?” Megatron regretted his outburst instantly, but jesus, really?! What the fuck?

Orion shrugged, still not meeting his eyes. “I was jealous. I hadn’t realized it, but I was … I was still thinking that someday, we might … might reconnect, somehow. That we could …” He trailed off, and Megatron did not try to urge him onward.

“That we could be together again?” he asked, finally, when it seemed that Orion was not going to do more than stare glumly at his hands. “Orion …”

Orion looked up at him then, finally, and smiled a little; but it was rueful and sad and knowing. “But there’s too much history between us now, isn’t there? We can’t go back.”

“No.” Megatron’s voice was quiet, and heavy with finality. “No, we can’t.”

Orion nodded. “We can’t. But … maybe we can find a way to go forward.”

Megatron hid his flinch, but Orion had the advantage of having known him a very long time, and caught it.

“Not as we are right now,” Orion amended quickly. “And maybe not for a long time. But I would … I would like to be your friend again.” He looked Megatron in the eye, and his gaze was clear and sad. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” and _god_ but it was like fish hooks snagging in an open wound, the way those words pulled on old memories and feelings that Megatron had worked for so long to suppress. “But we can’t be friends with you,” he laughed bitterly, “with you _policing_ my every move and constantly checking up on me, always believing that I’m doing something wrong.”

Orion nodded. “You’re right. Which is why I’ve requested that your case be reassigned to a different parole officer.”

Megatron would forever deny that his mouth actually dropped open in shock. Orion kindly pretended not to have noticed.

He stood, offering his hand to Megatron, who – numbly, and still flummoxed – took it. “Your new parole officer should be contacting you within the next two days,” Orion continued. He released Megatron’s hand after a brief, professional clasp, and offered him a tentative smile. “It’s my hope that … that with this change, maybe we can stop being enemies and start … well. Being friends again.”

Orion nodded cordially to Megatron, who had not actually stopped gaping at him for the last several minutes, and let himself out politely. The door closed behind him with a soft click.

It took another few minutes of dazed contemplation for Megatron to eventually regain his feet and wander into the kitchen. The soothing familiar ritual of coffee preparation – weighing and grinding the beans, heating water, blooming the grounds before steeping, timing the steep, all culminating in the smooth careful press of the plunger and a clean, smooth pour into his waiting mug (the blue one, the blue mug that Rodimus made for him as a gift, for no ulterior motive, just kindness; as blue as Roddy’s eyes) – went a long way toward steadying him, and by the time the coffee was ready to drink, Megatron was once again capable of tactical analysis.

One thing seemed clear: he was going to need a third mug.


	16. Angel and the Bad Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The shoe is on the other foot. It's a surprise for all concerned.

“Hey, boss.”

Megatron didn’t need to look up from the pile of paperwork in front of him to know that Drift was leaning on the partition wall with that crooked little half-smile on his pretty face. Calling him ‘boss’ was not a taunt, not from Drift; it was instead as open an acknowledgement of their mutual respect and wary affection as either man could grant – or, more specifically, as Megatron would tolerate – at this point in time.

It also usually signified that Drift had managed to pull off something that he thought Megatron would like.

A quick glance over the towering stack of forms and applications in front of him confirmed Megatron’s suspicions: it was indeed Drift, he was indeed leaning on the partition and smirking, and – if the handful of paperwork he brandished in response to Megatron’s inquiring eyebrow lift was indeed what Megatron hoped it was – yes, Drift had managed to pull another coup.

Impressive. Not that it would do to let Drift know that, of course.

“Yes?” Megatron replied blandly, feigning indifference.

Drift ignored the sham and presented Megatron with his handful of paperwork. “All necessary documentation, point of contact info, and forms needed for the store’s food bank contribution plan.”

“Very nice.” Megatron accepted the bundle – oh joy, more paper – and began leafing through it. He paused halfway through the stack to scrutinize the particular form he was seeing. “Drift, what is –“

“Full and part-time employee applications,” Drift supplied, suppressing a grin. “As well as info on store policies regarding employing minors.”

Megatron had to give Drift credit – he was ruthlessly thorough when it counted, not to mention sometimes eerily prescient. Megatron hadn’t asked him about the health food store’s hiring policies or whether they had any openings, but it had been on his list following the food bank issue, and Drift knew him well enough to have a damn good idea where Megatron was going next.

They had, Megatron thought fondly, always made a very good team. A less resolutely dour man might have been inclined to a bout of nostalgia or even wistfulness at this point. Megatron, however, was the pinnacle of dour resolution, and simply added Drift’s offering to the highest-priority inbox on his desk. (He had four inboxes, organized in descending order of priority, and a ruthless culling system that required far more frequent trips to the shredder than anyone else in the office.)

“Thank you, Drift;” and if Megatron’s voice was infinitesimally warmer than it usually was when thanking someone for adding to the stack in his inboxes, Drift knew better than to call attention to that fact. “Was there anything else?”

Megatron’s efforts to be diplomatic were painfully vestigial at best, but Drift was used to that, too. The fact that the old bastard made an effort at all was rare enough to make it a thing to appreciate.

Drift shrugged. “No, no other business. If you have a break coming up, we could go get some coffee, though. Catch up a bit.”

Megatron cast a dubious side-eye at the precarious stacks occupying his legion of inboxes, and prepared to offer as polite a refusal as he could manage. Before he could begin stringing together a vaguely diplomatic series of excuses, however, Rung popped out of his office long enough to intervene.

“Oh for god’s sake, Megatron, take a break. The damn paperwork will still be there when you get back.”

Megatron opened his mouth to object and was promptly steamrollered by his boss.

“Not like you don’t work more overtime than any three other people here. Go.” Rung shot him a severe look, magnified by his glasses and reinforced by his frankly impressive eyebrows. “Don’t make me tell you twice.”

Megatron simply sighed the heart-felt sigh of the terminally overworked and underappreciated, and stood up to grab his jacket. Drift tossed a grateful smile and a thumbs-up to Rung while Megatron’s back was turned. Rung winked, and disappeared back into his office.

*

There was a Starbuck’s across the street, but Megatron and Drift opted to walk a block and a half down the street to Constellation, which had the dual benefits of being local and – at this time of day, at least – very quiet.

Drinks in hand – long black single-source for Megatron, turmeric blood orange kombucha for Drift – they found a pair of adequately comfortable chairs in an adequately defensible position, and settled in. It was … surprisingly pleasant, Megatron acknowledged grudgingly to himself, to talk to someone he’d known for so long; someone who was part of his old life as well as his new one. Even if he knew how to get in touch with Soundwave, he didn’t dare, even if it was only to talk about Ravage’s charming habit of kicking shit out of his litter box when annoyed … _did he ever do that to you? And if he did, couldn’t you have fucking warned me?_ And as for any of the others … well. Best not to go there for a whole host of reasons.

An unexpected wave of loneliness washed over him suddenly, leaving him oddly bereft and adrift; but then Drift laughed, talking animatedly about his latest escapades with his little cat boat, and the loneliness ebbed away in the face of that bright, uncomplicated joy of shared connection.

Talking about the _Lost Light_ , unsurprisingly, lead to the inclusion of Rodimus in the conversation; and, while Drift didn’t hesitate to share the story about Roddy going out at night with flares on his surfboard, or the one about Roddy getting his arm stuck in the _Lost Light’s_ bilge while trying to help Drift remove an unexpected raccoon, Megatron was perfectly aware that a certain remove had crept in, uninvited.

The raccoon story petered out – Rodimus apparently did not have to carry through on his threat to actually cut his arm off in order to get it (and the raccoon) out of the bilge – and there was a moment of slightly uncomfortable silence.

“So, that … uh.” Drift stared at the horrifying dregs of his kombucha and shifted awkwardly in his chair, before turning to Megatron with a serious expression. “I need to talk to you.”

Thank god some things hadn’t changed; at least Drift knew to get straight to the point with him instead of dancing around it like an aerialist on speed. “All right.” Megatron set down his coffee and turned to face Drift fully. “What about?”

“About Rodimus.” Drift took a deep breath. “See, here’s the thing – I’ve known Roddy a long time, and the thing is that, under all that brazen extroverted persona he likes to put on, he’s actually very –“

“Drift,” Megatron cut in, bemused horror slowly making its way across his face, “are you trying to give me the ‘hurt him and I’ll kill you’ talk?”

“Uh.” Drift scratched the back of his neck awkwardly and was unable to make eye contact. “I guess? I mean, he’s younger than either of us, and I’ve known him longer than you have, so I sort of feel a little responsible for him …”

“Are you seriously trying to give me – me, Drift – the ‘I’ll kill you’ talk?” The bemused horror had now firmly entrenched itself and was setting up a defensive perimeter. “Drift … I gave people that talk about you.”

Drift made eye contact in order to stare, bewildered, at Megatron. “You did?”

“Of course I fucking did, you were my responsibility.”

A look of horrified suspicion was making its own inroads across Drift’s face. “You didn’t give that talk to Percy, did you?”

“Of course not, Percy knew better.” Megatron waited until Drift had picked up his drink and had a mouthful to add, “I gave it to Ratchet.”

Drift exploded into violent coughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Constellation is a real coffee house; turmeric blood-orange kombucha is a real thing (and the dregs are indeed horrifying); and a cat boat is a sweet little fishing boat like this one here:
> 
> http://howard-boats.com/barnstable-cat-boat/


	17. Burden of Freedom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the past refuses to be left behind. If you're lucky, the future can be even more stubborn.

He’d known it was too good to last.

He’d known better than to get comfortable. He’d known better than to hope. He’d known he could never really leave the past behind him, because too much of his past refused to let go.

Beside him, Rodimus was white-faced and shaking, though whether from fear or impotent rage he couldn’t actually tell – either was equally likely, and for that matter it could just as easily be a combination of both.

Megatron stared at the knife embedded in his front door, at the note – “Found you” – that it impaled, and felt an old, cold, deadly rage wake up from the back of his mind.

“Call Orion,” he growled, and Rodimus jumped visibly before nodding and pulling out his phone. Megatron dug out his own cell – a cheap burner, old habits dying hard or not at all – did the unthinkable, and called his parole officer.

“Prowl here,” said the calm, cold voice on the other end. Megatron hackled instinctively before shoving down that response and taking a deep breath.

“This is Megatron.”

“Yes, I know.” Prowl, as always, sounded singularly unimpressed. Megatron sometimes (often) wondered what it would take to shatter that composure, and whether it would be worth the no-doubt catastrophic price to be paid. “Why are you calling?”

“I’ve had a break-in.” Megatron glared at the knife and the note again, both of which should have been immolated by the sheer force of thwarted fury. “It was targeted; they left a note.”

“I see.” There was a brief, busy silence from Prowl, which Megatron knew translated into a frightening number of procedures and communications being put into simultaneous operation. Beside him, Rodimus was having a low-voiced and urgent conversation with Orion Pax that, if nothing else, at least sounded less stilted and awkward than the last few conversations between the two.

“I assume you have been smart enough not to enter the premises?” Mercifully, Prowl somehow managed to avoid making that statement quite as patronizing as it could have been; in response to Megatron’s grunt of assent, he continued, “I will be there shortly with two uniformed officers and a K-9 unit. Stand by.” The call was disconnected with a _click_.

Rodimus glanced up at him, and Megatron realized that he was gripping the phone hard enough to make the plastic case creak. “You okay?” he murmured.

“No,” Megatron gritted out through clenched teeth. “Not yet.”

*

Prowl, as advertised, arrived shortly with two officers – one of whom was, in fact, Orion – and K-9 unit in tow. Aside from the entire contents of the apartment having been variously shredded, tossed, smashed, broken, inverted, and – in a few cases – set on fire, it could have been worse; there were no booby traps, no unpleasant organic calling cards of any description, and no illicit substances conveniently planted in incriminating locations.

The K-9 unit did have a nasty surprise in the form of Ravage, who had apparently been hiding inside the back of the sofa. His emergence was announced with a loud shredding noise and a pained yelp from one of the dogs, before he paced regally out through the open door and alighted onto Megatron’s shoulder to glare disdainfully at everyone.

Megatron and Rodimus had given their statements and were waiting in the hallway for the all-clear; Orion glanced again at the note and shook his head.

“I would say you should pack a bag and get ready for a long stay at a safe-house, but … well, there isn’t really anything left to pack. The safe-house part, on the other hand, is non-negotiable.”

“He could stay with me,” Rodimus volunteered, and smiled defiantly in the face of Orion’s dubious side-eye.

“No, he couldn’t,” said Prowl, emerging from the apartment. “And it’s highly likely that you shouldn’t be staying at your apartment, either, Rodimus, because they probably know where you live as well.”

The defiant smile dropped off Roddy’s face like an over-ripe peach falling from its branch. “They … what? I. Shit, I …” He scrubbed his face roughly with both hands. “Who the fuck are ‘they’ anyway?!”

“Tarn,” Megatron rumbled. “And the Justice Division. Assassins.”

“Old friends?”

“Old subordinates.” Megatron remained as he was, arms folded, glaring at the floor in front of his feet while Ravage’s tail switched like an angry metronome across his shoulder. “Let’s just say they didn’t take it well when I turned state’s evidence in exchange for a reduced sentence.”

“Huh.” Rodimus chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. “Tarn and the Justice Division? Sounds like a shitty emo band.” Megatron stared at him, bemused, and Rodimus gave him a crooked grin and a playful shove. “C’mon, Megs, let’s go see if they left you anything to pack.”

*

They hadn’t. Megatron was frankly impressed by the thoroughness of their ransacking; there wasn’t a single piece of paper larger than a postage stamp in the whole place, which – given the number of books that they’d had to work through – must have required some serious dedication.

He stared for a moment at the wreckage of his kitchen – they’d even destroyed the waffle maker, for Christ’s sake – and at the brightly colored ceramic shrapnel that had been a pair of matching mugs, one red, one blue. There was a haze blurring before his eyes, not of tears but of rage; these idiots, these psychopaths, these petty _children_ had threatened not only him but Rodimus as well.

Apparently Tarn had forgotten what it meant to be under Megatron’s protection.

He was going to have to be reminded.

*

Standing in the wreckage of Rodimus’s apartment was far more painful. Unlike Megatron’s mostly empty crash pad, Roddy’s apartment had been a home, full of life and art and Roddy’s vibrant personality everywhere you looked.

Now all that art was scrap, broken and shredded and scattered like dead leaves; the warm little nest of his bedroom – the bed he’d made from old pallets, the piles of vintage kantha quilts from India, the contents of his closet, even the awful tiki mug he’d used to hold his damn toothbrush – was reduced to kindling and rags.

Megatron looked at the desolation on Rodimus’s face, and felt rage boil through his veins like magma. “I’m sorry,” he grated out, and the words burned his throat. “Rodimus … I’m sorry I got you involved in this, involved with me. I shouldn’t –“

“You,” said Rodimus hoarsely, staring at the wall over the remains of his bed where someone – probably Vos, given the neatness of the handwriting – had spray-painted the words _Oderint dum metuant_ in lurid purple letters, “should shut up right now, because I’m working up to being really pissed off and I don’t want to accidentally direct it at you.”

Megatron blinked at him. Rodimus gave him another one of those crooked little half-smiles, attempted comfort and rueful acceptance all in one.

“ _I_ got me involved with you, in case you had forgotten, y’know, who actually asked who out first; which, hey, I get it, you’re old, the memory starts to go, we’ll be buying you Viagra and adult diapers any day now, I’m sure;” meanwhile, Prowl was assiduously ignoring them while Orion valiantly tried to stifle a guffaw and only partially succeeded. “And yeah, okay, I didn’t exactly know I was getting in bed with the fuckin’ Godfather at the time, but it’s not like you weren’t pretty damn upfront about that shit, not to mention the whole trying-to-grump-me-out-of-your-life for, like, months …” Rodimus paused to actually breathe, and Megatron found himself inhaling in sympathy after that run-on marathon. “So okay, pissed-off assassins, coulda done without that, not to mention them totally trashing my place … but if you try to go all self-sacrificing and noble and, like, push me away for my own safety or some shit like that,” he turned a glare on Megatron that very nearly reached the intimidation level of some of Megatron’s own, “I swear to fuck I will hunt you down and kick your ass before any of those fuckers beat me to it. We’re in this together, got it? This Tarn fucker just cemented that, whether he meant to or not; and by the way, what the fuck does _oderint dum metuant_ mean, anyway?”

Megatron stared at him in utter silence before reaching out, wrapping Rodimus in both arms, and pulling him into an emphatic kiss with complete disregard for anyone watching.

“’Let them hate so long as they fear’,” said Prowl, establishing himself once and for all in Rodimus’s eyes as someone completely devoid of a soul.

“What?” said Rodimus, slightly muffled for obvious reasons.

“The quote,” said Prowl, attention seemingly riveted to the stack of paperwork he was meticulously filling out. “Latin. Attributed to Caligula.”

“Okay,” said Rodimus, extricating himself just enough to be able to speak coherently while maintaining maximum body contact with Megatron, who did not appear to mind said maintenance in the least. “So not only is this Tarn fucker a murdering thug, but he’s pretentious, too?”

“That about sums it up, yes,” said Megatron, and pressed his nose into Rodimus’s hair to hide his smile. “Not to worry, though. _Gladiator in arena consilium capit_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sure, Tarn is a pretentious murdering thug ... but Megatron is THE pretentious murdering thug, thank you very much.


	18. Ring of Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't mess with Rodimus in his studio. This is his art, and it is dangerous.

Fortunately for everyone involved, Tarn and His Shitty Emo Band (as Rodimus had dubbed them) were smart enough to know better than to approach Megatron at work.

Unfortunately, they were plenty stupid enough to approach Rodimus at work. Even more unfortunately, they – or at least Tarn – decided to approach him at the studio instead of at his day job.

There was actually some modicum of logic at play there; the studio was far more private than Office Max, and – unless you were in a particularly nihilistic mood – theoretically a far better setting for a good intimidation scene. On the other hand, Tarn should perhaps have done a little more background research on his target, an effort that might have illuminated him as to Rodimus’s current artistic medium of choice.

As far as Rodimus was concerned, this was an epic lesson in Why We Lock the Fucking Door, Lawrence; Stop Losing Your Key, You Tool. Apparently Lawrence (the tool) had once again propped the alley door open, having once again either lost his key or just forgotten to lock the damn thing after sloping off for a smoke. As a consequence, Rodimus was now eye-to-chest with a hulking slab of muscle who made The Rock look practically petite.

Gristle McMeat-fist grinned down at Rodimus, the expression pulling on the mass of badly-healed scar tissue warping across his left cheek from temple to upper lip. Rodimus stared back and tried not to look quite as much like a deer in the headlights of a combine thresher as he currently felt.

“You must be Rodimus.” Gristle McMeat-fist had a disarmingly nice voice. Like, should-be-narrating-audiobooks type nice. Late-night smooth-jazz radio-host type nice. That kind of voice coming out of Gristle McMeat-fist’s smug face was almost as disorienting as a blow to the head, and Gristle obviously knew it.

“Must I?” said Rodimus. “That’s too bad, I was feeling more like a Clement today. Maybe a Benedict.”

The grin broadened, twisting the scars and pulling Gristle McMeat-fist’s upper lip into a snarl. “A smart-ass, too. He always did like that.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced,” Rodimus said blandly, and adjusted the shaded safety glasses wrapping his eyes. “That’s okay, though, I’m not buying. Exit’s the same way you came in.”

“Lucky I’m not selling, then.” Gristle McMeat-fist’s voice dropped to a low, menacing purr that made Rodimus feel vaguely nauseated. “And you’re not dumb enough not to know how this goes: if you have any sense at all, you’ll get out now. Megatron’s going to get what’s coming to him – _sic semper tyrannis_ – and you’ll go down with him if you’re in the way.”

“Actually, that should probably be _sic semper proditores_ ,” said Rodimus, hands busy beneath the edge of the workbench. “You know, ‘thus always to traitors’? The other one is ‘thus always to tyrants,’ which doesn’t really seem to fit; I mean, I assume you’re not pissed at him for being a shitty boss, so –“

Gristle McMeat-fist, also known as Tarn, interrupted Rodimus by slamming his fist onto the workbench, thereby driving the knife clenched in said fist several inches into hard maple end-grain.

Rodimus groaned. “Dude. Seriously? You know I have to pay for that, any breakage comes out of my fucking security deposit; do I look like I have money, you gigantic dickhead?”

Tarn clearly had come to the inescapable conclusion that threats – verbal or otherwise – were insufficient to make his point in this case. He snarled and lunged across the workbench for Rodimus’s throat. Rodimus stepped back, raised a lit propane torch in one hand and a chunk of rebar in the other, and brought both into swift contact with Tarn’s outstretched arm.

The rebar bouncing off meat and bone made a horrible noise.

Tarn made an even worse noise as his sleeve burst into flame and his skin reacted in predictable ways to temperatures in excess of 3600 degrees Farenheit.

“Oops,” said Rodimus in a deceptively mild voice. “You might wanna get that under some cold water, STAT, or it’s gonna sting like the dickens tomorrow.” He tossed the rebar to the floor with a resounding clang, turned to the small forge behind him, pulled out a two-foot hunk of steel well on its way to becoming a gladius, and thrust it into a barrel full of what looked like water.

Given the torrent of flame that erupted from blade and barrel, it was probably not water.

Rodimus turned back to Tarn, now armed with a propane torch and an honest-to-god flaming sword, and grinned savagely.

Tarn diverted his attention from extinguishing his flaming arm long enough to snarl profanely at Rodimus, and then beat a hasty retreat through the alley door.

Naturally, that was the point at which Orion and Megatron barged in through the street door.

Rodimus examined the flaming sword critically, and then sighed before thrusting it back into the barrel of oil to properly quench this time. “Well, that’s shot. Totally wasn’t ready for quenching, dammit.” He extinguished the torch and set it neatly on the workbench, then smiled brilliantly at his guests. “Hey, guys! What’s up?”

“Did you just scare off Tarn?” Orion asked warily, as though saying it aloud would upset the fragile balance of the universe, or at least his own personal equilibrium.

“Who, Gristle McMeat-fist, there?” Rodimus gestured toward the alley door with his chin. “Is that who he was? Dude,” he added mock-seriously to Megatron, who appeared to be either trying not to laugh or having a mild seizure, “you had terrible taste in boyfriends.”

“Apparently I still do,” Megatron replied dryly. Rodimus blushed.

“You scared off Tarn with a plumber’s torch?” said Orion, still in that slow, careful voice. Rodimus began to wonder if Orion had suffered some sort of head injury, possibly courtesy of Megatron’s fist.

“Yeah, well.” Rodimus shrugged. “I also kinda maybe accidentally set him on fire a little bit.”

“How do you set someone on fire ‘a little bit?’”

“By not setting him on fire a lot.” Rodimus declared that line of inquiry ended by turning to Megatron and literally climbing into his arms. “Tired now, take me home.”

“Your wish is my command,” said Megatron in that low, purring voice that meant the good kind of trouble. Orion just shook his head and sighed.


	19. Keep Walking Back to You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For someone who talks a lot, Rodimus isn't necessarily very good at communicating.

He was sulking again.

Rodimus had been doing an excellent impression of a storm cloud for the past two days, complete with ominous rumblings. Attempts to determine what was wrong had thus far been fruitless, being rebuffed with angry glares, blatant ignoring, or the dreaded “if you don’t know, I’m not telling you.”

Megatron actually possessed a far greater reserve of patience than most people would believe, but that didn’t mean he was willing to exercise it to the point of madness.

It also didn’t mean he was willing to put up with this kind of petty bullshit, particularly from someone with whom he was sharing both living quarters and a bed, to say nothing of bodily fluids – though, admittedly, the last two had not been the case for the aforementioned past two days, as Rodimus was (a) sleeping on the couch and (b) refusing all physical contact.

The sound of cheap hollow-core bouncing off the wall heralded Rodimus’s entrance, and Megatron looked up from his book just in time to take a force-10 glare full to the face.

“How was your day?” he asked mildly, not really expecting a response – which was good, since what he got instead was a noise that could only be transliterated as “harrumph,” punctuated by Roddy kicking the door shut behind him as he rustled his way into the tiny kitchenette with an armload of grocery bags.

Megatron watched as Rodimus plopped his armload onto the meager excuse for counter space – it was impressive, really; the safe house actually managed to have a smaller, more wretched kitchen than Megatron’s now-defunct apartment, a feat he had not previously believed possible – and began unpacking it with the dedicated focus of someone who was Obviously Making a Point.

Ah. Single servings of grocery-store sushi, single-serving bottle of cheap zinfandel, and – the final insult – a single-serving container of the local bakery’s _tres leches_ cake.

Clearly, this could not be permitted to continue.

Megatron sighed; took off his glasses; dog-earred the page of his book; and stood up from the table, chair legs screeching across the scarred linoleum floor like apathetic banshees. Rodimus ignored him a little harder.

Megatron rendered further ignoring impractical by physically planting himself between Rodimus and the doorway, a move that effectively squished the smaller man against the kitchen counter. Rodimus glared up at him, back forced into an arch by the countertop digging into it, and brandished his disposable chopsticks with admirable ferocity.

“Back off.”

Megatron folded his arms across his chest – and across Roddy’s, given how closely they were packed in together – and started warming up a glare of his own.

“Don’t you think this has gone on long enough?”

Rodimus snorted. “I haven’t heard you apologize yet; so, uh … no. No, I don’t.”

Megatron resisted the urge to squeeze the bridge of his nose and pray for patience. “It might help,” he said slowly, drawing deep on his remaining reserves of patience, “if I knew what I was supposed to apologize _for_. But since you continue to refuse to _fucking tell me_ …” 

Ah. Yeah. The patience was definitely running out, there.

Rodimus either didn’t notice or didn’t care, leaping into the fray with teeth bared and chopsticks at the ready.

“I shouldn’t _have_ to tell you! You should _know_ this! _Everybody_ knows this!”

“Clearly not ‘everybody’,” Megatron roared back, patience utterly exhausted, “since I for one have _no fucking clue_ what the _fucking problem_ is!”

Rodimus recoiled.

Megatron realized abruptly that Roddy had never actually been on the receiving end of his actually-quite-legendary temper; had in fact never even seen said legendary temper being unleashed on anyone (though that cinder block wall had borne the brunt of it; but that was, he acknowledged, somewhat different); and was now quite genuinely frightened.

Megatron took a deep breath. Took a step back – as far as he could, until his back was against the opposite wall. Closed his eyes, and breathed.

When he looked over at Rodimus again after a long silent moment, the first thing he noticed was that the chopsticks had been put down on the counter instead of being gripped tightly in a white-knuckled fist; and the second thing he noticed was that Rodimus was looking at him – really looking at him – for the first time in two days.

Megatron blinked. Rodimus offered him a tentative little smile.

“We, uh …” He shook his head. “I really fucked this up, huh?”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Megatron consciously released more of the tension from his shoulders, but continued leaning against the far wall. “I just fucked up pretty bad myself.”

“No – well.” Rodimus looked away, rubbing the back of his neck self-consciously. “Yeah. Uh. That … that was kinda scary, to be honest; I don’t … really wanna see that side of you too often, y’know?”

Megatron huffed out a ghost of a laugh, and offered his own small tentative smile. “I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lashed out like that.”

“Yeah, well, maybe if I’d actually used my words like a grown-up …” Rodimus grimaced. “I just … I hate …” He broke off, scowling at the ground. Megatron stayed quiet; there were so many things they didn’t know about each other ( _yet_ , said the hopeful little voice), but this at least he did know, that Rodimus needed space in which to think just as much as Megatron himself did.

Rodimus took a deep breath and tried again. “I … it scares me, to talk about … about feelings and shit. To tell someone I feel hurt, because …” He trailed off, looking pleadingly at Megatron, who nodded in understanding.

“Because it makes you vulnerable?”

“Because it makes me needy.” Rodimus looked at the floor; couldn’t quite look back at Megatron. “Because no one wants a needy, broken partner.”

There was a long moment of profound silence.

“Rodimus?” Megatron’s voice was infinitely soft, but Roddy heard it, and looked up. “I don’t think you’re needy. And I certainly don’t think you’re broken.” A watery little smile began to make its way across Rodimus’s face, and Megatron was encouraged to go on. “I think … I think you need something that I’ve not given you; but that doesn’t make you needy.”

Rodimus gasped out a damp little laugh that would only be compared to a sob by a very unkind observer. “Can I hug you now?”

Megatron simply opened his arms in invitation, and Rodimus fell into them – literally, since in the one step required to cross the space between them he managed to trip – and pressed his damp cheek against Megatron’s shirt. Megatron nobly forbore to complain about the dampness, and just enjoyed the hug.

Based on the content little snuffling noises, Rodimus was enjoying it too.

Megatron gave him a little more time in which to dry his face on Megatron’s – now very damp – shirt, and then took the plunge and asked the question. “So … what do you need?”

“You.” The answer was slightly muffled, but still audible. Rodimus huffed out a warm breath against Megatron’s chest, and then leaned back to look him in the eye. “I need you, okay? I don’t … I don’t wanna lose you, and I was scared that I might.”

Megatron was silent for a moment in complete dumbfounded shock. “What – why?” He realized that the question left a host of things open to interpretation, and hurried to clarify. “Why were you scared? What made …” He paused. “What did I do to make you think that?”

Rodimus smiled, but it was a crooked and self-lacerating little excuse for one. “Coffee.”

Nope, still confused. “… what?”

“You had coffee with Orion.”

“Oh.” Megatron took a moment to process this. “And … that was bad?”

“Yes!” Rodimus stopped. “No! I mean … uh.” He sighed. “It … look, it’s stupid, okay? I _know_ it’s stupid. I know you’re a fucking adult who can hang out with whoever he wants; I don’t own you, you don’t need my permission, all that shit. But … at the same time, I … you didn’t _tell_ me, you know? I didn’t find out until later, and I know it was no big deal to you, but it was to me! You and Orion have this crazy-intense history, and I know he still wants you –“ 

Megatron opened his mouth to refute that.

Rodimus silenced him with a pointed stare. “He still wants you, even though I know it’s not mutual, and … and I just …” He blew out another harsh breath. “It hurt. And I got scared, and I make bad decisions when I get scared, so …”

Megatron interrupted Rodimus as gently as possible, with a soft chaste kiss. When he felt Rodimus smile into the kiss, he felt relatively assured it was acceptable to continue.

“This is a fucking awful way to do things, isn’t it?”

Rodimus blinked. “…uh?”

Megatron smiled, ruefully. “I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t actually ready to move in together so quickly. We haven’t even known each other that long, and now we’re holed up together in a safe house while members of the gang I used to run are trying to hunt us down and kill us.”

“Well, when you put it that way …” Rodimus grinned up at him. “Yeah, okay. I wasn’t actually at the move-in-together point either, and now we’re living in what sounds like a really lame B-grade action movie.” 

“Could be worse.”

Rodimus queried with a single arched eyebrow.

Megatron shrugged. “Could be a rom-com.”

“Oh fuck, anything but that!” Rodimus squirmed out of Megatron’s arms just far enough to reach over and grab the plastic containers of sushi off the counter, then gestured toward the miniscule café table with a small, inquisitive smile.

Megatron grabbed the chopsticks and mini zinfandel, and joined him at the table.

Half of a mediocre eel roll later, Rodimus looked over at Megatron and offered, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

Rodimus grimaced. “The whole … not talking thing.”

“Well.” Megatron made some serious eye contact with a California roll of dubious provenance. “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you I was having coffee with Orion. I understand why that was upsetting.” He broke away from the maki to look at Rodimus instead. “I … you know I’m not interested in him anymore, right? That was a _long_ time ago, and a lot of things have changed …” He winced. “Not to mention the whole parole-officer fiasco.”

Rodimus tried not to inhale his eel roll. “Fuck, that was a mess. How the hell did that even happen?” At Megatron’s speculative look, Rodimus waved him off. “Rhetorical question, never mind, doesn’t matter. It just … yeah. Scared me, I guess, that you two might, uh, rekindle the romance or something.”

Megatron raised one eyebrow. “Parole. Officer.”

Rodimus flicked pickled ginger at him with a grin. “Yeah, yeah, I hear ya.” His grin turned particularly impish. “But you gotta admit, he is some prime beef –“

“Rodimus,” and now there was genuine horror in Megatron’s voice. “ _Parole. Officer_.”

“So you’re not gonna leave me for him?” Roddy’s grin was still teasing, but there was something underneath that spoke of genuine fear and old loss.

“Why would I leave you?” Megatron tried to make the response as gently teasing as the question, but Rodimus’s expression crumbled into vulnerability and he knew he’d failed.

“’cause everyone does?” It wasn’t a question. Roddy’s voice was high and thin with distress that he was struggling to suppress. “Sooner or later … everyone always says I’m too much or not enough or …” He swallowed hard. “Everyone leaves eventually.”

There were any number of responses that leapt immediately to mind – instant denials, knee-jerk refutations, assurances and promises … Megatron dismissed them all.

“This ‘everyone’ sounds like an utter fuckwad,” he said mildly, carefully transferring wasabi paste into his soy sauce with the deliberation of a chemist synthesizing nitroglycerine. Rodimus choked on something that was probably supposed to be a laugh. "'Too much, not enough’ … bullshit. That’s everyone’s loss.” He glanced up briefly from his scrupulous wasabi conveyance to smile at Rodimus. “Personally, I think you’re just right.”

Rodimus laughed outright at that, a damp spluttering giggle completely lacking in dignity or restraint. “Does that make me Goldilocks, then?”

“If you want,” Megatron replied indulgently.

Rodimus’s grin turned naughty. “Does that make you Papa Bear?”

“Not if you ever want us to have sex again, no.”

“Awwww …” But Roddy’s grin was still bright and naughty, and became brighter and naughtier still when his eyes fell upon the untouched _tres leches_ cake sitting on the counter.

Megatron followed his gaze, and grinned back. They were definitely going to be changing the sheets after tonight.


	20. Fly Little Bird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Megatron's just about had enough of renewing old acquaintances. The old acquaintances have a different opinion.

They had found him again.

Megatron stared at the fire-gutted remains of the so-called safe house, note still Bowie-knifed to the door (half off its hinges and slumped against the wall at a drunken angle), and wondered how it would all end this time.

*

It wasn’t often that a day which had already featured arson, gratuitous vandalism, reams of insurance paperwork and police reports, and the presence of not only his parole officer but also Orion Pax could actually get worse, but this one had clearly spun itself up into a Category 5 shit typhoon and was preparing to make landfall.

To be fair, there was plenty of room for things to go still further downhill – there hadn’t been any non-metaphorical natural disasters yet, and no one who mattered to him was either in jail, in the hospital, or dead – but sitting in the police station with a clipboard full of paperwork and then being confronted with the smirking face of Starscream, of all people, was almost enough to make death sound kind of appealing.

As usual, Starscream was impeccably turned out, sleek and gorgeous in a tailored three-piece suit that would have looked foppishly over-done on any other human being but just made him look exotic and predatory.

Naturally, Rodimus hated him on sight.

“I hate you,” he announced flatly, looking Starscream over with a critical eye and an utter deficit of tact or circumspection. “I don’t know who you are, but I hate you already. Who are you?”

Starscream preened – eliciting that kind of reaction was an unequivocal win in his book – and offered his hand to Rodimus. “Starscream. Megatron and I are …“ He threw an incendiary glance at Megatron, which utterly failed to inflame its apparent target but did a spectacular number on Rodimus. “… _old friends_.”

Rodimus – sprawled inelegantly across two of the station’s cracked plastic chairs with one leg slung territorially over Megatron’s lap – stared at the offered hand as though it came with a Faustian bargain attached, and let the offer hang until Starscream finally retracted it. The smug little grin made it perfectly plain that, as far as Starscream was concerned, this was just another tally-mark on his scorecard.

Then again, Starscream had never played against Rodimus, who more than compensated for any relative lack of experience with sheer gall and impudence.

“Old friends, huh?” Rodimus gave Starscream a bright, conspiratorial grin. “I’m guessing that’s synonymous with ‘cell block sweethearts,’ right? Lemme guess.“ He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “You were the bitch, right?”

Megatron managed not to laugh, but it was a close thing.

To Starscream’s credit, he was only gobsmacked for an instant before recovering, favoring Roddy with a brief but genuine grin. “Honey, I’m always a bitch.”

At this point, Megatron decided that it was in everyone’s best interests that he step in (not least of all his own), as the most likely two scenarios to emerge from allowing the conversation to devolve further would either involve a screeching cat-fight or – far worse – a vengeance-fueled team-up.

“Rodimus, this is Starscream. He used to be a drug-running mercenary pilot; now he’s a city-running mercenary pilot.”

Starscream scoffed elegantly. “Please, I’m nothing of the sort; I merely hold a position on the city council –“

“He’s the chief administrative officer.”

“—and wish only to serve my community to the best of my ability.”

“He’ll sell you out at the first sign of trouble and come up smelling like roses,” Megatron translated dryly. “It’s nice to see you again, Starscream; my life really hasn’t been the same without someone constantly scheming and trying to fuck me over.”

Starscream perked up visibly. “Really?”

“No.”

Starscreamed grinned like a knife. “Good. I’d hate to think you were slipping. With the kind of trouble you’re in right now, you won’t last long if you’ve lost your edge.” He turned to Rodimus, who had been listening to the exchange with the expression of someone on the receiving end of a particularly persistent used car salesman’s least-effective pitch. “So your name is Rodimus? What do you do with your life, Rodimus?”

“Avoid people like you,” said Rodimus flatly.

“So an epic failure, then.”

“Fuck you.”

“Girls, girls, you’re both pretty,” Megatron interjected acidly. “Starscream, what do you want?”

“Believe it or not, I’m actually here to help.”

Megatron stared at him for a moment. “You’re right, I don’t believe it.”

Starscream smirked at him. “That’s my boy. Honestly, though – I owe you. All the times I betrayed you, and you still kept the DJD off my back? I owe you a _lot_.”

“Which is an untenable position for you, naturally.”

“Precisely.” Starscream flicked imaginary lint from one impeccable lapel with a likewise impeccable fingernail. “So what, exactly, can I do to help you, so that I never have to think about you again?”

“You could stop flirting,” Rodimus suggested through clenched teeth.

Starscream modulated the smirk to a condescending smile. “If only that were true.”

“ _Enough_.” Megatron found himself rubbing at the bridge of his nose in a telltale gesture of exasperation, and pulled his hand away from his face with a jerk. “The DJD found our safe house and torched it. We need a place to stay where they won’t find us, at least long enough to come up with a better plan than ‘don’t die a grisly flaming death.’ Is that something you can manage?”

Starscream adopted an attitude of scrupulous contemplation, right down to the cocked hip and hand on chin. “Well,” he drawled, “I suppose I could always put you up at one of my places …”

“Dude, I would honestly rather be shanked in my sleep,” said Rodimus.

That razor smile flashed briefly at Rodimus, who bristled. “That could certainly be arranged.” The smile dropped as Starscream turned back to Megatron, all business. “But no, while I have no qualms about the efficacy of my security teams, this particularly sticky little mess is not one in which I intend to get personally involved; but that doesn’t mean I’m not in a position to help you anyway.”

“You’ll understand, of course, that I’m prepared to trust you about as far as I can throw you,” Megatron replied dryly.

Starscream smiled like a shark with exquisite taste and an unlimited wardrobe budget. “Yes, and we both remember just how far that is, don’t we? But back to the subject at hand – I agree with your assessment that some type of secure accommodation is called for. The further off the grid, the better.”

Megatron blinked. “If you’re about to suggest that we bunk with Thundercracker for the duration –“

“Fuck no, he’d never speak to me again.” Starscream’s grin became, if anything, even toothier. “No, I had an even more remote location in mind. Do you remember the Scavengers?”

Judging by Megatron’s expression, he remembered them very well, and was not particularly enjoying the experience. “I’d be hard-pressed to forget them. Where are they now?”

“Safe,” said Starscream. “And remote. And, as always, very _very_ well-armed. In a completely legal and above-board manner, of course,” he added sanctimoniously.

Rodimus rolled his eyes. “Of course.”

“The accommodations might be somewhat _primitive_ ,” Starscream continued, examining his impeccable fingernails, “but nothing the two of you can’t handle, I’m sure.”

Megatron rolled his eyes, finished the last of his paperwork with a savage stab that would have done considerable damage had it not been performed with a mostly-empty ballpoint pen, and stood up. “Sounds delightful. When do we leave?”

Starscream did an unnervingly good impression of a pantomime villain, complete with oily smile and obsequious bow. “I have a car waiting outside.”


	21. Farmer's Almanac

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Agriculture, as far as Rodimus is concerned, is something that happens to other people. His current circumstances attempt to convince him otherwise.

When Starscream said he had a car waiting, Rodimus had assumed a sleek limo, maybe an elegant BMW or Lexus, even something exotic and eye-catching like a Lotus Elan.

He had definitely not been expecting a fully-loaded GMC Topkick.

To be fair, it was also a limo, which – being a Topkick – meant that it was an obscenely large vehicle in all three dimensions, not just height and width. The ridiculous interior volume meant that Starscream was able to have an unusually well-stocked bar in addition to the nigh-obligatory buttery-soft leather seats, heavily-armored door panels, and bullet-proof windows (including the sun roof, of course).

“Dude,” said Rodimus, staring at the luxe yet impressively secure interior with big round eyes, “how many people are trying to kill you?”

“On an average day?” Starscream shrugged elegantly and poured himself a shot of Macallan 18. “More than you’d think.”

Rodimus gave him a narrow-eyed glare. “You are seriously underestimating the number of people I think you’ve talked to on an average day.”

Starscream grinned at him over the top of his shot glass. “Touché.”

*

Rodimus did not have many opportunities to get out of the city proper, seeing as how he was largely constrained to the physical boundaries defined by public transportation, effectively worked three jobs, and – most recently – was hiding out from a squad of assassins that his okay-probably-technically-now-boyfriend used to lead. Still, every time he did manage it, he never failed to be astonished by the rapidity with which urban sprawl gave way to dense forest interspersed with big open patches of suspiciously tilled-looking land that might possibly be farms, if he were so credulous as to believe in such things at his age.

There were small black specks on a distant hillside. A less worldly person might have thought they were cows. Rodimus had himself fairly well convinced that they were unusually ambulatory oil derricks. (Agriculture – particularly of the animal husbandry variety – was something that happened to other people, possibly fictional ones, as far as Rodimus was concerned. Evidence to the contrary was viewed with extreme suspicion.)

Megatron, unsurprisingly, was thoroughly ensconced in his book – apparently it was Forensic Science Week; he had just finished The Body Farm and was now working through a biography of Dr. John Hunter – and thoroughly ignoring everyone else with an air of faint desperation. Rodimus supposed that would be true of anyone stuck in an enclosed space with Starscream, to say nothing of someone who could technically claim the arrogant bastard as an ex; and the arrogant bastard in question had already put away enough Macallan 18 to scupper a battleship and, apparently unaffected by what had to be a physically impossible B.A.C., was busy running up his roaming data charges with lightning-quick thumb swipes across his phone.

“So, uh.” Rodimus stared out the window, chin on his fist, and carefully avoided eye contact with everyone named Starscream. “How did you find out about us being at the station, and all the shit with Tarn and his Shitty Emo Boyband? ‘Cause, seriously, if you’re watching us all the time on CCTV, you need a hobby like whoa; and if you’re stalking your ex, then you and I are gonna have words.”

“You do remember the bit about me running this town, yes?” Starscream pointed out archly. “Glorious Leader here wasn’t just blowing smoke: I run this town. I know everything that goes on, especially when it concerns me.” He smirked at Megatron, who continued reading only because feigning death would attract more attention. “Or the people I consider mine.”

“He’s not yours anymore,” Rodimus growled, still staring resolutely out the window.

Starscream laughed softly. “Oh, my dear boy. Feel free to keep telling yourself that.”

*

It was far too many miles and far, far too many hours before the limo made its final turn away from civilization, pavement, and cellphone reception, crunching to a halt after a seemingly interminable winding excursion down what appeared to be a poorly-maintained game trail, and ending its journey in front of a barn that might once possibly have been red. The barn was no longer red in the same way that its walls were no longer square to each other or the ground; the whole structure slumped drunkenly toward the hillside into which its fieldstone foundation was embedded like an ex-athlete who had stubbornly resisted last call until the bitter end.

Split-rail fences meandered across the property in a similarly drunken manner. Any guesses as to what spaces they were intended to delineate would remain a mystery without some sort of aerial surveillance. No guesses were required as to the inhabitants of said spaces, as said inhabitants had gathered to investigate the new arrivals and hopefully mooch snacks off them.

A chicken ambled through the decrepitly bucolic scene, clucking under its breath in a desultory fashion.

Rodimus opened his door and promptly recoiled. “Jesus fuck, what is that smell?”

Starscream – still comfortably ensconced in his buttery-soft leather seat and stabbing at the keys of the satellite phone to which he’d been forced to switch forty-five minutes ago – made a rude noise. “Look around, city boy. What the fuck do you think it is?”

“Is this a _farm_?” Rodimus stared, wide-eyed, at his environs. A significant swath of the environs stared back, albeit with greater indifference shading toward apathy. Holsteins were not exactly known for their intellectual curiosity, after all. “Are those _cows_?!”

“You always did go for the smart ones,” Starscream remarked dryly to Megatron, who ignored him with the skill of long practice and climbed out of the limo to stand beside Rodimus, who was looking somewhat shell-shocked at his current proximity to an entire herd of burgers on the hoof.

Any further pithy remarks or witty _bon mot_ , however, were temporarily downgraded in importance by the distinctive sound of a round being chambered in a high-powered rifle of the sort that probably wasn’t intended for civilian use and whose ownership almost certainly, in this case, violated an impressive number of local and federal laws.

“Your car is looking at me funny,” said a voice that would be menacing even without the high-caliber accompaniment. “I think I’m gonna shoot it.”

“Starscream,” said Megatron wearily, “what rampant fuckwittery is this?”


	22. Better Class of Losers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life on the farm is about as far from a bucolic idyll as you can get when you're dealing with Starscream, the DJD, and the Scavengers.
> 
> And there are cows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My god, it's been a while since I've written these boys ...

The guy with the AR-15 and the dubious criteria for what should and should not be shot full of holes was apparently named Spinister. He managed to combine being a large-animal vet with being an actual war-zone vet in a way that made Rodimus’s head hurt, and combined both of those with a tendency to be easily distracted by shiny objects in a way that usually indicated some sort of repeated head trauma.

Combat-related trauma – physical and mental – appeared to be something of a theme among the Scavengers, as it turned out. Crankcase had a plate in his head. Fulcrum was missing various internal organs – in whole or in part – and apparently only slept by means of five-second micronaps throughout the day. Misfire abused caffeine in a way usually seen only in hard-core gamers and late-shift security guards, which did not do his attention span any favors but, as Krok pointed out, had significantly fewer side effects than any of the other entries in the vast pharmacopeia of stimulants he used to favor.

Krok himself held it together better than the rest, but it didn’t take too long for Rodimus to notice the repetitive hand gestures, the way he regularly – clockwork regular, down to the minute regular, regulation regular – checked in with the rest of his guys: just a quick text, one ping only Vassily, counting his chickens.

“So what I want to know,” Rodimus muttered to Megatron as they zipped together the patched, worn, well-washed sleeping bags they had been given to make one big sleeping bag to share, “is whether these guys were this messed up before or after they joined the ‘Cons.”

“Before, mostly,” said Megatron, running one hand idly over age-thinned army green cotton. “Part of why they joined, I suspect – hard to get or keep a job when you’re a veteran with PTSD, if you don’t have family to help you. Easy to end up on the street. And then … well.” His lips tightened in an expression that Rodimus was coming to identify as shame. “We didn’t exactly provide anyone with the skills for reintegrating into society. Not much focus on job training or finding affordable housing for people when you’re too busy burning the world down around your own ears.”

*

For once, Rodimus was not ogling Megatron – covertly or otherwise – as they prepared for bed. For once, his okay-he's-probably-really-my-boyfriend’s big studly body, and the possible permutations of both their bodies in combination, was not at the forefront of his mind.

His apartment was gone.

Their safe house had been conclusively demonstrated to be nothing of the sort.

They were on the run from a gang of assassins, bunking down in an old barn on the grudging sufferance of a different gang of (ostensibly retired) assassins.

Sometimes Rodimus found himself deeply regretting having met the crusty old bastard who stole his seat on the bus. Sometimes he wished he had left well enough alone and picked a different seat.

Sometimes he wished he’d never met Megatron.

And then he hated himself for feeling that way, because this technically wasn’t Megatron’s fault; because Megatron really was trying to do better, to make up for the frankly appalling things he had done; because Tarn and his Shitty Emo Boyband of like-minded psychopaths had a choice, just like everyone else, and they had chosen to go with the terminally fatal version of expressing dissatisfaction with their former boss instead of, say, sending him irate letters or even just sucking it up and getting on with their collective lives.

Rodimus focused on stripping down to t-shirt and boxers, folding his jeans, tucking his socks into the toes of his Converse; he couldn’t face Megatron right now, couldn’t risk him seeing what was surely so clearly written on Rodimus’s face.

Then again, persistent silence from Roddy tended to be a huge red flag of its own, and he knew it. Rodimus scrambled for something to say, to fill the echoing void. The current absence of anyone glaring at him provided a dollop of inspiration, and he metaphorically snatched it up in untidy desperation.

“You think Ravage is okay?”

There was an affirmative grunt behind him from Megatron, and then the rustle of movement. “Orion will take care of him until Soundwave can come pick him up.”

Rodimus thought about that for a moment. Orion’s face as he was handed the growling, lurching cat carrier had been priceless: determination to Do the Right Thing warring with genuine dismay and basic survival instincts. “Hope Soundwave comes to pick him up soon.”

Megatron chuckled. “I suspect Orion feels the same.”

Orion had been instructed on the care and feeding of Ravage, whose droning whine of impending mayhem had risen and fallen in eerie counterpoint to the general clamor of a busy police station. He had also been instructed on how to open the carrier using a long stick from the other side of a mostly-closed door. Orion had clearly taken very careful note of those particular precautions.

Rodimus surprised himself by laughing, and then dared to turn toward Megatron, confident at least in that brief moment that his face betrayed nothing of his internal turmoil – the wonders of schadenfreude at work.

Megatron was facing away from him, bent at the waist as he folded his jeans on a convenient hay bale. He had stripped to nothing more than his boxer briefs, and Rodimus felt his heart seize and his brain lock up at the sight, because Megatron was wearing silky black boxer briefs festooned across the ass with the image of a rainbow-wreathed unicorn prancing across a gleaming star field, a chubby tabby cat riding majestically on its back.

It was a toss-up as to which was more unbelievable: the fact that these boxers existed at all, or the fact that Megatron was not only wearing them but had to have deliberately purchased them, because Rodimus sure as hell hadn’t been responsible for this travesty.

Megatron must have become aware of the scrutiny, because he straightened and turned toward Rodimus, the tiny quirk that would be a tentative smile on anyone less stalwartly crusty appearing at the corner of his mouth.

“… they were on clearance?” he offered quietly, and Rodimus burst out laughing and stepped forward into a warm, strong embrace; and then the laughter crumbled abruptly and broke into sobs, and Rodimus buried his face in Megatron’s chest and wept out the confusion and fear and rage that had been building since the night they found that fucking note pinned to Megatron’s door, since the night their apartments – respectively horrible and cozy and nevertheless both _home, dammit_ – had been destroyed, since the night their lives had been thrown into chaos and upheaval and all the slow, careful learning of each other had had to be pushed aside or sped up or just generally churned into broken little fragments snatched piecemeal here and there; like this moment, in their underwear, in a hayloft.

Rodimus choked out a garbled string of syllables ending in a rather damp assertion of “… _not fair_ ” mashed against Megatron’s chest.

Megatron stroked Roddy’s back and head and shoulders, a little helplessly. “No, it’s not.”

Rodimus produced another unintelligible mass of noises, and terminated it with an authoritative “… _sucks_.”

Megatron wisely stifled the urge to laugh. “Yes it does.”

Rodimus looked up, sniffled defiantly, and planted his chin firmly in the center of Megatron’s chest to glare up at him with reddened sclera, lashes clumped wetly with residual tears. “I wanna eat ice cream in the park with you.”

Megatron blinked. “Okay?”

“I wanna go to the movies with you.” Rodimus pulled back far enough from Megatron’s loose embrace to poke him emphatically. “I wanna sleep in on cloudy mornings. I wanna sit on the couch and read together. I wanna do all that couples shit that we haven’t had a chance to do yet.” He glared at Megatron’s tattoos, height difference putting the swirls of ink roughly at Rodimus’s eye level, as though said tattoos were to blame for all their current misfortune. “This is bullshit. Fuck the DJD.”

Megatron made a stifled choking noise that inspired Rodimus to giggle moistly. “Or is part of the problem that you already did?”

“Only Tarn,” Megatron admitted ruefully, “and only once, and it was _terrible_. The fawning adulation was just excessive. Besides,” he added, in a voice as cautious as the hand he snuck up to cradle the back of Rodimus’s head, “and I’m assuming that saying so isn’t going to earn me some unpleasant form of retribution – I’d much rather fuck _you_.”

“Tough shit, old man.” Rodimus pulled away, but the smile and the warmth in his eyes and voice eased the sting at least somewhat. “I may be easy, but I’m not _that_ easy. I’m holding out for an actual bed, not—“ as he toed the sleeping bags disdainfully—“not some ancient, crusty sleeping bag in a pile of hay.”

“To be fair, I don’t think they’re crusty at the moment.” Megatron knelt to access said ancient, crusty sleeping bag, slipping inside and then striking a pose that was so clearly intended to be over-the-top seductive and cheesy that Rodimus almost choked to death laughing. Megatron grinned, and managed to make the expression worthy of an indecent exposure charge. “But maybe we could change that.”

“Call me overly-fastidious, but the miasma of cow farts rising from below doesn’t exactly get me in the mood;” but Rodimus was grinning as he snuggled down into the sleeping bag and Megatron’s embrace.

“It does add a certain piquancy to the atmosphere,” Megatron deadpanned.

“That’d be the methane.” Rodimus poked Megatron until he turned over on his side, and then plastered himself against Megatron’s back, arms wrapped tight and legs entwined. “I guess cuddling is okay, though.”

Megatron’s hands closed gently over Rodimus’s. “That’s just the hypoxia talking.”

Rodimus fell asleep snickering.

*

The sun rose entirely too early the next morning. So did the cows, the chickens, and Krok; the downstairs menagerie was just noisy, but Krok had the temerity to climb up to the hay loft and turf them out of the surprisingly cozy nest they had managed to bully out of the hay bales and army surplus sleeping bags.

He also had the temerity to introduce Rodimus to the atavistic horror that was the modern milking process. Scavenger Farms only had six dairy cows, so the chore wasn’t as onerous as it could have been, but the process of hooking up each cow’s engorged teats to the milking machine – not to mention getting hip-checked, stepped on, and face-whipped with a shitty tail while doing so – left Rodimus speechless and wracked with sympathetic dysphoria.

Megatron, who was on log-splitting duty with Crankcase, saw Roddy staggering out of the barn, white-lipped and glassy-eyed, and laid aside the maul to judiciously guide Rodimus around several suspiciously fragrant puddles and emphatically away from the pig pen, and ensconced him securely on an upturned feed bucket before handing him a bottle of water.

“Guh,” Rodimus managed eventually.

“That bad?”

Rodimus shuddered dramatically. It wasn’t entirely feigned. “Those poor cows … I’m never drinking milk again.”

Megatron leaned comfortably against a convenient fence post. “Aren’t you lactose-intolerant?”

“Not when it gets between me and my one true love, Cherry Garcia.”

“I thought Chunky Monkey was your one true love.”

“Only on Saturdays.” Rodimus peeked up at Megatron a little shyly. “And only when you’re not around.”

The greyish cast had left Roddy’s face, Megatron observed with some satisfaction; a breather and some water and the healing power of banter had gone a long way to restoring his usual equilibrium.

Naturally, that was the perfect time for Krok to emerge from the house, grim-faced behind his customary bandana, and hand Megatron the burner cell that Starscream had left for them.

“It’s Starscream,” Krok said shortly, in response to the questioning looks. “And it’s bad.”


End file.
